Sewing in My Underwear

My Glorious Problems With My First Handmade Cosplay

 

So to detract from my irritated ranting yesterday, I'm going to lament today about my struggles with this cosplay of Quistis Trepe from FF8 that I've been working on for way too long.

To begin, I don't have much to go on as far as proper examples of what the character looks like.  FF8 was a PS1 era game and the devs must have been seriously against concept art back then.  I've mostly been using a still from combat to keep her as true to game as possible.  Yea, there's the figures and fanart, but that's not what I'm looking for.  I'm looking for what appeared in the game.

Which leaves me with something like this as my reference picture:

Yep.  Gotta love those PS1 graphics.

Thar is literally the picture I've been using as well.  It isn't great, but it's what's in the game and unfortunately the CGI of her is in her instructor uniform.... which she only has on for a fraction of the game.  Hell, she even stops being an instructor at some point!

That's not even very long into the game either.

So the first issue I ran into was the color of Quistis' outfit.  It's salmon, which for those who aren't familiar is kind of an ugly combination of pink and orange... which meant I wouldn't be able to easily find it at all.  I ended up finding only one type of cloth in the right color, and that was broadcloth.  Not terribly comfortable, but breaths well and is thin enough that it won't be too warm.... except that it's so thin that if I decide to wear something dark under it, you can see right through it without an issue.  That essentially meant that I needed to either double layer the broad cloth or add lining and since I bought it online at fabric.com, I was concerned I didn't have enough for both the top and skirt, so I made a trip to the local JoAnns and bought some liner... only to discover I did have enough and it wasn't that big of a deal.

Oi.  So now I have a lot of ugly salmon fabric.  Hell, maybe I'll make a Quistis plush out of it.

Next came the skirt and top.  Easy right?  At least I thought so.  I found a nice pleated skirt pattern and a nice top pattern that was sectioned off to give the pleated look her outfit has. (Burda 7140 for the top and Very Easy VogueV8773 for the skirt) I was pumped, I was prepared, I was ready.... and then I realized that patterns are complete nonsense.



The shortest skirt length ended up being almost to my ankles, when the pattern clearly shows it just past the knees.  Not a big issue, but still showed that these patterns are obviously made for giraffe people.

The shirt.... the shirt has been a subject of misery for several weekends now.  Here's a picture of it after the first day of sobbing and stabbing myself with pins.

In case you can't tell from there, that's really... way... too big...

This pattern also helped me realize that even if I wear a size 8 dress in real life... that the patterns insist I'm a size 14 or 15... and that... makes me wonder what kind of person would wear the size 8 pattern...?  Giraffe people, probably.  That piece around the neckline is actually two copies sewn together... the original pattern called for just one.  I honestly don't know many people whose neck is only 7 inches around, but I promise they don't exist.  Well... maybe they do.  But they're probably babies.

So as you can see up there, there's a weird curved part of that shirt that was suppose to be sewn on with nonsense according to the instructions.  I ended up figuring it out.  Yesterday.  And that was well after I threw the instructions out and said "I'm making this up from now on."

#Nailedit

Now to be fair, I was actually really happy with the way the whole thing was looking, even with the issues and frustration.  I sat down and worked on it yesterday, trying to finangle a way to make it cover up the bra I'll have to wear under it because let's be real, I'm part of the "Too large NOT to wear one" club and working on adding more pieces so that the bar underneath won't be visible.  I ended up bringing it in and sewing it blindly incorrectly enough times that my seam ripper may be dull right now but had finally gotten to the point where none of it was held together by safety pins and I could really try to hem it and fix it.

So I took the zipper I bought and safety pinned it on only to realize the zipper was close bottom... and I couldn't get it off the dress form with it pinned there, so there was literally no way I was gonna be able to use this zipper.  Sigh.  Two trips to JoAnns two days in a row and it's kinda cold outside right now.  Had to buy a zipper I didn't like nearly as much as the last one and figured I'd get some thinner bias tape for the crazy silver trim she has all over that shirt and finally.... FINALLY.... I think I can finish it...

Wish me luck.  I'll need it.

It's Ranting Time!

So it's been a while.

I've been trying to only really update this when I have something at least halfway interesting to talk about.  That doesn't happen much often, but hey... I'm terribly boring.

I was thinking about this blog not too long ago and how I hadn't updated it in a while... and how it's name is "Fueled by Rage and Caffeine" and while I absolutely adore that name, I haven't been ranty lately.  It's probably a combination of my medication and my want to try not to be so melodramatic.  I just don't let the things that bothered me once upon a time bother me as much as they used to anymore.

However... there's some things that are really starting to bother me lately and it's things like this, things that SHOULDN'T be happening at all that really light that old flame of anger flare up.

Everyone knows what body shaming is.  It's when you tell a person that the way their body is happens to be wrong.  For a long time (and I'm sure it's still happening) bigger people were getting the brunt of this force.  "You should really lose some weight"; "Look at how terrible and fat that person is", for some examples.  It's a terrible thing to do and a terrible thing to say to people and I love the fact that people are standing up to this and telling others how awful of a human being they are for doing it.  But there's a new kind of body shaming that's been happening in the gaming community something hardcore.  It's kind of always been there, but it's REALLY coming out now.

"Sexy video game characters are not realistic"

Okay.  While some of the games do take it a bit far, to try and tell me that skinny girls with big (natural) boobs don't exist is by far the biggest lie I could ever hear.  They exist.  People know they exist... but they've been deemed "non-realistic".  How does that make the thin women with "large assets" feel?  Now they're subhuman.  Less than human because their proportions are "not realistic".

Give me a moment but... excuse me?

Why is it suddenly okay to body shame thin women with large hips or chests?  Why is this the "right" thing to do?

Long story short?  It isn't.  Body shaming is never okay.  It doesn't matter who you are, what you claim to be, what you are or how many influential people you know.  Body shaming is never okay.  It never was okay and it never will be.  People have enough problems with their own self image and self esteem that they don't need some douche hat telling them that the body they were born with was wrong.

And while I'm on that topic...

Let's talk about how it's also suddenly okay to shame straight, white, cis people.  Let's talk about how it isn't bigotry or discrimination if you're being a colossal ignorant moron about the matter.  "It happened to me so it's totally okay for me to do the EXACT SAME THING to other people while also preaching equality!"

Yea.  "Equality."  Equality for non-straight, white, cis, thin women with large hips and boobs and men.

Someone please tell me that this isn't hypocrisy... because that's all I see here.