Lady of the Thread's Sewing Basket

Hmm… Just a couple of days left until MangaNext. No new costumes but I do need to decide on what I’m wearing and make sure everything is ironed. My brother and one of his friends are going, too, and he tells me they might go all 3 days because there’s stuff they’re interested in each day. If that’s the case, I suppose I’ll also go all 3 days since my father should be driving us.

I know I want to wear my newer Ayame one of the days and was thinking of wearing my brocade robe for D if I went a second day but hadn’t really expected to go a third day. A few days ago, I got an urge to pull out my nyosen uniform even though The Twelve Kingdoms doesn’t really have a manga (unless you want to count those books they made by taking anime screenshots and adding speech bubbles ^_^;) Maybe, I’ll do that…

Seems like the big news the last couple of days has been the announcement about the WCS at NY Anime Festival. I am not interested in entering because: 1) I much prefer actual craftsmanship contests, 2) I’m not great at performing, 3) I don’t have a partner, and 4) I won’t fly so it’d be really silly for me to enter a contest where the prize is basically a trip to Japan to compete in the finals. :-P

I’m still thinking of applying to do a walk-on in the masquerade without being considered for WCS though. The new Count D costume is costing a lot with all the pearls and fabrics and it would be nice to have a chance to show it off onstage rather than just going in for hall cosplay judging.

And finally, another little PSOH drabble, written for a prompt of “harmony.” My brain makes the wackiest leaps with some of these prompts and what came to mind this time were some scenes from “Sunday in the Park with George,” a Sondheim musical about George Seurat’s creation of the famous painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” In the show, “harmony” was among the words that Seurat would often mutter as he worked on his painting. The painting is really in a Chicago museum rather than California but let’s pretend the characters are seeing it somehow, okay? ^_^;

( A Day at the Museum )

Edit: Wow, the random stuff you can learn from Wikipedia... Looking over that "Sunday in the Park with George" article, there was a link to a Desparate Housewives episode with the same title. Someone who works on that show must be a big Sondheim fan because most of the episode titles come from his songs. o_o Never watched that show so I had no idea.

Well, MangaNext is over. Not the most interesting con experience ever but that’s partly since I was sitting in Artist’s Alley for a large chunk of the time I was there. It was nice to see people again and to get to talk to some new ones though. ^_^

Friday turned out to be kind of boring. My father dropped me off at the hotel around 10 in the morning but there wasn’t really much of anything going on until mid-afternoon. Sat around in the lobby until registration opened, got my badge, and then wandered a while before going to setup my table in artist’s alley. Stayed there until about 6 when I packed up and went to hall cosplay judging. A bunch of people recognized me as Count D, more than I would have guessed; I wasn’t sure how popular Petshop of Horrors was since it seems to be one of those rarely cosplayed series.

Unfortunately, my brother only got a few pictures of my Count D costume before my father and sister showed up to pick us up and they were impatient to leave. So, I don’t have any full length photos or back views. T_T Have to put the costume on again sometime and get better pictures.

Out of what I have at the moment, this is the one the shows the most of the fabric painting. For fun, I messed around with the eyes on this one in Photoshop since I know I’ll never talk myself into spending the money for contacts to actually do the mismatched eyes. *needs expensive toric lenses* >_>;


( More pictures )

Saturday was much better attendance-wise. Sat in artist’s alley again until it was time for cosplay chess. I got to be a bishop on the magic side as Terra. Boy, I wasn’t prepared when they told us we could talk after all. I threw together a fireball from fabric scraps as a prop the night before but didn’t really know what to say when attacking since FFVI didn’t have voices and I haven’t played the more recent ones yet. ._. The fireball got stuck for a moment, too, when I tried to pull it out of my armwarmer.

Afterwards, my brother took a few pictures of my Terra costume since he hadn’t photographed it before. (He wasn’t at Otakon when I first wore it.)

( Terra pictures )

Then, I wandered around until my father showed up and had dinner with him, my brother, and my brother’s friend. Heard the results of the hall cosplay contest (I won Best of Weekend with my Count D costume. ^_^) and watched some of the cosplay cabaret before going home. We ended up skipping Sunday of the con since there wasn’t anything we really wanted to do that day.

Next con for me will probably be NY Comic Con in February. I’ll probably just go for a day and wear one of the costumes I already have instead of making something new. As much as I like cosplaying, I’m kind of glad that I can finally take a break from making costumes and catch up with some other hobbies!

Something I’d like to do this week is dig out some needlepoint canvas and work on some stitchery. I found a needlework magazine amid the clutter on the desk a few weeks back and there were a couple of pretty projects in there I was tempted to start but I was holding off because I needed to finish Count D. One’s a needlepoint perfume bottle with beaded and metallic accents. And the other is a floral beadpoint purse. ^_^ I think I’ll start the bottle first since I’m not sure how many of the bead colors I have on hand for the other piece.

Ugh, today hasn’t been the greatest day. Woke up and noticed that my right thumbnail was cracking horizontally around the end of the fingertip. Normally, it wouldn’t matter too much to me but I’m not pleased since MangaNext is in two weeks and I need my nails to be long for my Count D cosplay. -_-; He changes clothes so often that the long nails, along with the hairstyle and dark lipstick, are probably the most recognizable elements of the costume. I had thought about fake nails before but I never remember those sticking very well. Bah, at least, it’s the hand that’s going to be covered by the glove. I suppose I could claim I broke it trying to clean out Leon’s filthy apartment… (D broke a nail in the manga that way and was freaking out over it!)

And now, I think I might be catching a cold. >_< Possibly from my sister who was home sick yesterday. Not good when I’ve still got so much to do on this costume and need to sort out jewelry for my artist’s alley table within the next 2 weeks.

Dress: need to finish painting fabric for the back, cut the lining, and actually sew everything; plus, figure out how to do the ornament at the neck, might need to get more supplies for that

Glove: not even started, need to make a pattern and actually sew it

Wig: Done but might get some touchups

Makeup: purchased already

Shoes: need to be bought; you can’t see them in that pic so I suppose I could get away with wearing my black pumps if I don’t have time to find flat slippers like Count D usually wears. >_>;

Q-Chan plushie: probably about 70% finished at the moment; need to finish sewing it

Bird prop: probably won’t be done for MangaNext since I don’t know how I’m going to make it and don’t have materials yet

T-Chan plushie: probably won’t be done by then either because I’ve got the clothes to finish and I haven’t been able to find shaggy orange fur other than little 9”x12” panels -_- He’s not actually in the picture but, like Q-Chan, I wanted to have him since he’s one of the more recognizable animals from the series.

Hmm… It’s the weekend again and it looks like I actually have stuff to do for several weekends in a row which is kind of rare. As mentioned previously, I have a wedding reception to go to tonight with my parents.

Next weekend is the Broadway Flea Market and Grand Auction. (http://www.broadwaycares.org/index.cfm) It’s a charity event held each September by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. There’s always lots of theatre memorabilia for sale, some which you can’t get anywhere else, and they have a celebrity table where you can get autographs in exchange for a donation. Plus, there’s an auction for more unique items like walk-ons in Broadway shows and opening night tickets for upcoming productions. I’ve been going for several years and things that I’ve bought in the past include beads from “The Phantom of the Opera” chandelier, letters used as props in “Les Miserables,” stitchery done onstage by one of the little old ladies in “The Producers,” and copies of costume sketches from “Flower Drum Song.” ^_^

The weekend after that is my parents’ anniversary and my birthday. I guess we’ll end up going out with relatives for a dinner party as usual. It gets kind of blah after so many years. >_>;

Then, the weekend following that is MangaNext. Hope I can get my costume stuff done in time. I’ve finished painting the front of the dress and the sleeve. Still need to cut the piece for the back and paint some feathers on it. There’s no back view of the dress but I don’t want it to just be plain when the front has all that detailing. Then, cut the rest of the fabric and actually sew the dress. And I need to finish Q-Chan and figure out the glove. At this point, I don’t think I’ll get around to trying to make the bird before the con. Here’s a picture I took of my painting progress the other day. Things should be more spread out vertically but the artist made D so tall and skinny in the picture (even though I don’t think he’s intended to be particularly tall. o_O) so I had to cram things together a bit to get all the feathers to fit.



I noticed that hall cosplay contest rules have been posted for MangaNext. I’ll enter if I get Count D finished to my satisfaction by then. Not sure which day’s contest though. I’ve always done the AnimeNext hall contest on Friday so that I’ll have more time free on Saturday when there tends to be more going on. But I’ll have to see what works out better schedule-wise if I’m going to be commuting for the con and in Artist’s Alley.

I thought I’d get in some needlework before I jump into working on another costume so I rummaged through my collection of kits last night and found a beaded Mill Hill pin that I’d started long ago. I decided to finish it up and it went pretty quickly although silk ribbon embroidery isn’t really my specialty. Pin is a bit less than 2 inches wide so the picture is bigger than it actually is.



As for costumes, I’ve been feeling compelled to figure out that Chinese dress design I mentioned earlier in the week. I got out my cheongsam pattern and it looks like it might not need that much alteration to the body since the fitting seems to depend on two sets of optional darts. I found a wig style that’s almost perfect for the hair, too, so I might end up doing Count D for MangaNext instead of starting the new Ayame. (I’ll still wear my existing Ayame costume one day though since I’m planning to commute and it’s easy to change into.) Count D would probably make a suitable Halloween costume, too, considering that he runs a shop with plenty of demonic animals. Like the man-eating totetsu who’s always eager for permission to munch on people! XD;

And an idea occurred to me for MangaNext. Since registering for Artist’s Alley is only $20 above regular registration, I was wondering if I should try to get a table in an attempt to finally clear out all the jewelry I made a couple of years back. (I’d signed up to sell at a crafts show but the crowd was terrible and I ended up bringing home nearly everything and it’s been sitting around my house since. -_-;) I know I remembered seeing at least a couple of people selling jewelry in the Artist’s Alley at Otakon although it didn’t particularly relate to the convention theme. Good idea? Bad idea?