Jareth progress pics

I miss posting!
I still haven’t tried to recover all those photos :/ I need to figure out a dedicated time to try, which is the real problem.

In the meantime, pictures I took on my ipad mini!

That’s the next pic I have unfortunately. The paper taped on the front was so AJ could draw roughly where his weird bone chest piece goes and the size on me.
She also drew the approximate lines on the muslin sleeve, but then we both decided that sleeve head shape wasn’t right. So I ended up using sleeve from Simplicity 2341 afterall, I just cut it in it’s largest size for a bit more fullness at the head.

More after the break!

Because all the stretch velvet is backed with denim, I didn’t want to have all the layers in the armpit and did more muslins to figure out my layering.

I’m not sure why I took this. Maybe to show the curves are slightly different?
Oh wait I remember! Originally I thought the sleeve was a regular sleeve with bias strips making the stripes, but it’s actually scale/petal style. So this is the original sleeve, salvaging what I can (so glad I overbought!).

I cut a regular sleeve out of some plain black I had in my stash, and mounted each layer to that. That little dip there is ’cause this is from the original sleeve.

You can see the slight S curve here, the top is the front side. Though once it’s on, it’s hardly noticeable.

This is the underside of each piece (except the bottom most). Just in case you saw the underside, I wanted it to be pretty!

Getting the vinyl around that S curve was a pain, as such it’s not totally even >.< But, since you can’t tell once it’s on, I guess it doesn’t matter!

Yessss, one side done!

Sewn up (ahaha, this is my instagram pic)

And attached to the jacket!

Plus collar!
I couldn’t really pin this shut without marking up the vinyl, hence wrinkles from it falling open.

Then I made some cuffs. I did them this way because it was the only way I could figure to get the vinyl bias to look right.

Then hand tacking the sleeve lining in!

I sewed all my hook & eyes on during the drive down to Costume College, but didn’t get it completely done because the paint I used on the bone chest piece just wasn’t drying so I couldn’t attach it.
Also! Since I was sewing until the last minute, I didn’t have time to do a makeup test D:
So I did this on the fly, and have already identified all the things that need to be fixed for next time.

Lovely bathroom lighting.
He’s wearing some sort of weird… orangey nude lipstick. I don’t have any nude lipstick, so I tried to replicate it with white lipstick and foundation over that. Which worked the first time, then when I touched it up turned out way too white. Oh well.

A photo posted by AJ Wu (@ajmeows) on

Oh hey! Just found the embed code on instagram 8D;;

That “red carpet” was super scary and intimidating! Not doing that again.
But overall pretty pleased with how this Jareth turned out!
Now to finish it and take some decent photos.

I haven’t touched it since CoCo, doing more work on my house! So hopefully some pictures from that coming soon as well (I know everyone missed pictures of my beets, don’t lie to me).

CoCo 2015 progress

So I’ll post about the Sewalong later, hopefully. June completely got away from me, and I suspect July will as well. I DO want to do both those challenges. I’m really going to try to complete all the challenges, just maybe not in the month they were supposed to have been done in.

Part of the reason July is failing is whoops, Costume College is in three weeks!
I really waffled on what to make, I’m just not feeling the historical vibe right now. So I wanted something cool, but not too hard to make in a short amount of time, and something I’d been wanting to do. Augh, decisions.

Anyway, I finally settled on Jareth from Labyrinth, I’ve wanted to make all his outfits for yeeeears. My absolute favourite is the white outfit he wears at the end, but there definitely wasn’t time enough for that. So I decided to do my 2nd favourite, the one I’ve always thought of as his Escher outfit, but I guess it’s usually referred to as his “Within You” outfit since that’s what he sings when he wears it.

This is the photo most available on the internet:

Many searches don’t get much better!

So I took a bunch of screencaps from my DVD and ordered the bluray.

But before I did that I oh so wisely decided to start on the mockup (yes that’s right, I cleverly did the mockup before researching. I’m pretty sure my brain has gone on walkabout).

I used 2341 for the body, and 1558 for the sleeves (which I still haven’t actually tested, but there we are).

AJ fit me, I moved some seams over, and she fit me again. Thanks! It looked so nice I thought for sure I’ll use this pattern again, so I made a paper pattern before proceeding.

Yay cutting!
The fabric gave me some issue too, because it really looks like a silk velvet to me. And given the deadline, I don’t have time to run around trying to find the right shade online when my local stores don’t have silk velvets. The one day I was free to run to SF was the Pride Parade, it would have been madness! As my friend pointed out when I asked if she wanted to join me, soooo glad she mentioned that. So instead I got stretch velvet, which is a pain to work with ;_;

Then I thought, what a perfect opportunity to talk about flatlining, as I told a few people I would. So I was flatlining the stretch velvet to the muslin mockup, to give stability and body.

Sorry blurry. After I pinned all that (because it’s stretchy and flimsy, it needs loads of pins), sewed it around the edge and pinned another panel I realize what am I doing? This is a terrible example of flatlining! This muslin is hardly adding *any* body, these pieces are still way to floppy and soft.

I just happened to have some denim hanging out waiting to be made into a sleeping bag… bag so I grabbed that instead. Way better.

Then I took a break for making another jar of pickles.

Mmm… haven’t actually tried these yet. But looking forward to it.

Anyway. So started sewing the back together.

I don’t have a velvet board so I just pinned a scrap to my sleeve roll to try to press it a little. Being stretch velvet… it doesn’t really press.

(sorry for these all being a little blurry, tired picture taking)
So I whip stitched the seam allowance to the denim, I’ve only done the top here ’cause I just wanted to get it to the point where I could put the back fake yoke on.

SO! That’s where it is so far. I’ll hopefully get the rest of the seam allowances sewn down while visiting my granparents this weekend.

Oh and wig!

I sewed loads of trimmed down wefts into a punky wig I got… 9 years ago in Japan (for a Roxas from Kingdom Hearts II costume I never finished), so happy to finally be using it! I actually bought two wigs off Amazon I was going to sew together for this, but when they came in the colour matched perfectly, so I’ve only cut apart one.
E said she’d style it for me, so one less thing I have to do!
Gotta sew like the wind now!