Constable Geneva - Part 3

I spent most of the day working on the Geneva costume again, and I'm completely exhausted.

I started out working on the sleeves, which have been the bane of my existence this weekend.  I finally managed to get them worked out, and I hand-stitched the upper sleeve to the dress and the bra straps.  It took forever!  I also finished shaping the lower sleeve and put seam stop stuff on all of the seams so I wouldn't have to worry about serging everything.

That all took me most of the day, but I'll admit - I was procrastinating.

Lower sleeve

Pattern for upper sleeve

This evening, I finally buckled down and laid out all of the patterns on the gold organza.  Once I was satisfied that it would all fit, I made the first cut!  It was incredibly nerve-wracking, but everything went well.  I had lined up the patterns so that when I sewed the pieces together, the squares would all match up.  I did "mess" one piece up, but it was no big deal.  I could have just left it (there would have been two clear squares between the gold squares), but I had more than a yard left over, so I just cut another piece.

I sewed it all together VERY carefully.

Here it is so far (I haven't attached the lower sleeves yet because I'm not positive I like them yet).  The only regret I have is that I would have been able to get the squares to slant inward more.  I thought I had it all figured out, but when I put it together, it just didn't fall right.  That's okay, no one will know.  Well, except for all of you.

Here's the back - the chiffon helps keep the sleeves up.  It's not perfect, but my hair will be covering most of it.  The edges will be covered in trim, but that's the last step.  Also, the chiffon won't stay plain for long.  Tomorrow I'm BEDAZZLING!!!  Yes, that's right - I found chiffon that would look good, but it was sequins, not rhinestones, and since I've been putting so much time, effort, and money into this costume, I decided to make it look right.  Thank goodness for the Michael's gift card I have, because I'm not sure I could otherwise justify purchasing $30 worth of rhinestones.

I'll be finishing up everything else tomorrow.  Good night!

Constable Geneva - Part 2

I've been working on the costume for the last few hours, and thought I'd take a break to blog about what I've done so far today.

I went to JoAnn Fabrics this morning and purchased some organza to use as a mock-up.  I worked on a few variations of the front of the dress to see how it would best fall with three pieces (center front, side front).  With a three-piece front, I'll be able to cut out the organza so that it slants in, just like the original costume.  In addition, the way that the fabric falls should pretty much hide the seam as long as I match up the squares correctly.

I also found the color for the under dress that I've been looking for, so I remade the under dress out of the new gold taffeta.  I then made a mock-up out of the cheap organza and threw that over.  I was pretty satisfied, so I finalized the pattern on new paper.

The back of the dress wasn't sitting tight across my back like I'd hoped, so I put in some darts on the sides of the back panel where the organza will cover them.  In addition, I realized that I would need some support for the dress so that it was not solely reliant upon the sleeves and trim.  In the photos from Community, a thin strap is visible, but it's either a bra strap or a strap made out of the same material as the under dress.  Well, that just won't do for Ms. Perfection, so my wonderful husband offered to drive back to JoAnn's and buy some clear bra straps for me.  I attached them to the front where the trim will cover them, and then ran them over the shoulder and attached them just to the inside of the darts.

The trim was completed earlier in the week.  The trim on the top of the photo actually goes beneath the other trim on the sleeves.  It's a wide brown ribbon (I believe 1.5")  that I painted with gold acrylic paint.  To make the triangles, I measured 1.5" inches down a 26" long piece of ribbon and marked it with a pencil, then connected the marks.  The other trim, which I found at JoAnn's, is made out of sequins and will go around the neck and sleeves.  It technically should be beads, but the only beaded trim that was passable was about $30 per yard, and if I'm going to spend $60 on trim, I'm going to hand-bead it myself in the correct pattern.  And that's certainly not going to happen, so I'm settling for the sequins!

I'm going to go work on the sleeves now.  I won't cut the organza until tomorrow, as I want that to be the very last step before stitching on the trim around the neck.  Also, I'd like to have a VERY clear head when I do it, because I'll have to check everything about five times before I cut it.  I'll probably hand-stitch all of the trim and organza, just so that I don't mess it up with the machine.

Constable Geneva - Beginnings

Chicago TARDIS is coming up next weekend, and I had been thinking about cosplaying a character from Torchwood.  But then, Community came out with the episode Virtual Systems Analysis, where Annie plays Constable Geneva in the Dreamatorium.  Since Matt cosplayed Inspector Spacetime last year, I decided to make the Constable Geneva costume.

At first, I was just going to make it really simple, and not spend much time on it.  Then I remembered, I'm me.  Consequently, I've been trying to find material for this costume for months, but I just could not find any fabric that would work.  It looks like embroidered organza, but a thorough search of every online fabric store and a trip to Vogue Fabrics yielded no results.  I finally decided to just make a gold under dress, and get some plain organza for the over dress.

And then, after a morning of running every possible search I could think of, after scrolling through hundreds of pages of Google images, I found it - the listing on eBay.  The fabric was perfect.  It was the perfect size, its squares were even spaced out the same as the costume fabric on Community.  The only thing is that the color isn't quite right, but then again, if I could apply the same lighting and filters as they do on TV, it would probably be correct.


It was insanely expensive.

Then I realized - I'd just won $100 at the company Halloween party, and I'd been given a $50 gift card to Michael's for converting a video for a coworker.  So, I decided to buy the fabric.

In the meantime, I started working on the under dress, which is gold satin.  I used a pattern that was essentially a shift, and then just kept cutting it down until it was the right shape.  I also shaped the top to accommodate the trim.

I also got to work on the crown.  I used fun foam and plastic canvas, and painted both with a gold acrylic paint.

I also got to work on the crown.  I used fun foam and plastic canvas, and painted both with a gold acrylic paint.  I need to clip a few bits of canvas off of the top, but it's essentially finished.

I laid out the under dress to make the pattern for the over dress this evening, and the material isn't wide enough.  Also, if you look at the picture, you can see that the squares slant inward on the sides.  I couldn't figure out how they did that, but I think if I make the front panel of the dress three panels instead of one, I can cut the sides on an angle to create the slant.

I also worked on the sleeves and the trim for the sleeves, but they're not ready to go yet.  I'll be working on that, as well as reshaping the dress, tomorrow.  I'm hoping to have the whole costume finished by the end of the weekend.