Great Lakes Garrison & Base

dirty tusken wrote:if you wanted to be totally awesome you'll finish this for mccc.

Unfortunately that is impossible. I still have to make the bow, paint the design on the obi and the bow, have my mom finish the skirt, paint the design on the skirt, make the sleeves and gradient dye them, figure out if I want to commission from a woodworker the top part of the staff and then once that is done paint it.

this makes me a saaaaaaad tusken. some day I'll make it to dragoncon. lol

dirty tusken wrote:this makes me a saaaaaaad tusken. some day I'll make it to dragoncon. lol

I plan on wearng it at Youmacon as well this year.

Time for a progress report. So I commissioned my mom to work on the pleating of the skirt, she has the pleating done but need to do the hem and wait band. (no pictures yet)

The staff top I commissioned the ever so talented Woodchuck and it is at the post office ready to be picked up tomorrow. These are the pictures he sent me.



For the Obi I spend many many many hours hand painting it and finally finished tonight. So here is a crap ton of progress pics.
Templates


Test painting


Center part done, using custom paper template to trace out the vine work.


Vine work all painted


Leaves traced


Leaves painted


And here is the final product



So all that I have left is to paint the top of the staff tomorrow when I get it from the post office, paint the pattern on the skirt when I get that from my mom (that will take forever) and make the sleeves. ^_^

It's looking awesome, Anna. I love the paint job on the obi. Wouldn't it have been easier to paint the skirt before the pleats were in?

Mieal_Deneb wrote:It's looking awesome, Anna. I love the paint job on the obi. Wouldn't it have been easier to paint the skirt before the pleats were in?

Yes and no, we won't be ironing the pleats until after I paint. But I know the skirt pattern matches up when the pldats are flat and closed as well as connected on the fabric not seen.

Regardless, I can't wait to see pictures of the finished costume. You're attention to detail is awesome...this coming from the detail freak who had to hand embroider her entire Padmé ep3 aqua georgette gown because anything less was not good enough. http://costumesandartwork.blogspot.com/ ... pdate.html

I was thinking of having someone do machine embroidery for the Obi and skirt but didn't know how to make the files required. Then I thought about hand embroidery, since I have never done that I went with fabric paint. Maybe sometime in the future I can upgrade with embroidery.

This is looking so great! can't wait to see it finished,

Okay so Woodchuck came through I received the staff pieces back and I went to town on painting and adding Rub n' Buff. I apologize I do not have many progress shots of this because I went full steam ahead on getting it done. But the process I went through was taping off everything but the part I wanted blue and sprayed the Kilz primer and then the blue. what I should have done was sprayed everything with the primer and then sprayed the blue and the Rub n' Buff would have covered what I didn't want blue. So I taped off the blue areas and the part to be silver and used Antique Gold Rub n' Buff. I then moved some tape around and used the Silver Leaf Rub n' Buff.





Here is the staff next to my Duck Tape Dummy with all other completed piece:



I need to add weight in the base of the staff to counter balance the top portion. I am not sure how I want to do that yet.

What I have left:
*Add velcro for the skirt closure & paint it
*The whole bow
*The sleeves

lead buckshot and lots of glue might be a good idea

It's looking awesome, Anna!

I see you have a thingy hanging on the bottom of the staff, if you can take that out, buy and extension for a spade bit, I think you can get them 12 inches, and then use a 1/4 spade bit on the end, drill the hole and melt some lead sinkers and poor it into the end. Sounds like a lot of work, I know..... but thats what we used to do for my pinewood derby cars when I was a kid.

Okay so added lead sinkers to the bottom portion of the staff and it helped a tiny bit only. lol But this week I mainly worked on my sleeves and my skirt.

I got the skirt back from my mom and need to add the Velcro closure. I will save the painting for this until last since that is just detail work that can wait.



So for my sleeves I did a few trial runs, the first one being WAY to tiny and the second one was to long but about the right measurements for the other portions.



So I made my two sleeves and did some fray-check on the seams for extra security. Also note that I used elastic on the part around my bicep to help hold the sleeves.



I made the strings for the sleeves and found some beads that match close enough with out going crazy searching.



For the loops where the strings go I used 1/2" biased tape and made them into loops in order to hand stitch them onto the sleeves. They ended up being just wide enough for the beads to fit through. ^_^



Here is one sleeve complete except for dying. I will finish stitching on the loops for the other sleeve and attempt dying this weekend.

Getting so much closer!

Okay I was able to finish my sleeves, the dying process was interesting and I learned a lot from it that I will use next time I have to gradient dye white fabric. *Tip, don't use your fray check until after you dye the fabric.

Test dying technique and color check


Sleeves Drying


Sleeves Done


1/2 of 1 of 4 bow loops almost done being painted. I need to paint the flowers and then the reverse side.


And here is everything I have that is 100% Completed


Still need to:
Finish Painting Loop 1 of 4
Receive Loops 2-4 from my mom and draw the pattern
Paint Loops 2-4
Figure out painting pattern for the center of the bow and paint it
Put the bow together with my mom's help
Figure out the pattern for the paint on the skirt
Draw pattern onto skirt
Paint Skirt

*If it is to close to Dragon*Con and I haven't gotten to the painting of the skirt I may leave that until afterward so it is not half done.

awesome sis you can do it!!!!

I think you can have it done by D*C

Looks like it's turning out really great. As dirty tusken said "some day I'll make it to dragoncon." I hope that to be the case with myself as well.

Time for a quick update! I have been working like a mad woman on this the past few weeks. I have finished painting all of the bow loops.
In progress

Outside of loops

Inside of loops


Also decided I didn't like how the Obi flowers were so repainted them to match the bow loops and the one CGI picture I have decided to use as my "cannon."
Before

After


Started working on my skirt painting pattern and have run into a few setbacks. Here is the pleated paper pattern all done.

I cut the vines for the bottom tier


Test painting the skirt fabric



My snag was that the pleated paper was not matching up to the fabric pleats, even though I measured three times for each. >_< So for the fabric I used my pattern from the internet that I used on the paper pleated to draw just the vines on the skirt with the pleats closed.

The vines are painted


Left to do:
Trace on flowers over closed pleats and paint them
Trace the vines and flowers under the pleats and paint them
Paint on the leaves for outside and inside the pleats
Paint the middle bow loop and connect all bow pieces (Will finish the 23rd at my mom's)

It looks like you will have this done it time for D*C. Very nicely done