Riven Cosplay - Shirt Upgrade

I like to make costumes I can wear over and over again. Sometimes I have to do a rush job to get the costume done on time, but then I have the opportunity to go back and redo something, give it an upgrade.

It looks a little droopy in front because my dress form is rather flat-chested...

I made a new shirt for my Riven costume. The first shirt was literally three pieces of cotton gauze fabric sewn together at the shoulders and sides. It was really rough, not wearable in public.

This shirt took four (4) hours to make, a nice after-work evening project. The fabric is super-soft, stretchy, and also breathable!

I didn't use a pattern, but I did have a store-bought shirt of a similar fabric, so I traced it to get a pattern for the back, then I draped the rest. If I didn't have a serger, this stretchy fabric would have been a lot more difficult to work with, I would have had to roll all of the hems, yikes! As it is, I just serged the edges every piece of fabric after I cut them out and ended up leaving the arm holes and the bottom hem rough. The bottom will be tucked into the skirt anyway!

I hope I can finish the rest of my upgrades to this costume before PAX. It's less than two weeks away!

Vintage Lace Fingerless Gloves

I made these gloves to wear with my Steampunk Superwoman costume. The lace was something I found in a box of assorted lace my grandma had given to me, so the materials for this project did not cost me anything.

First I made one glove with my sewing machine. I draped the lace over my hand and wrist to estimate the size, cut a rectangle, then turned down the edges about 1/8" and straight-stitched them down. Then I sewed the seam (the inner wrist) with a thumb hole, tried it on, and adjusted. This took a while, but eventually I ended up with one glove.

Did I mention I finally got a serger?!

This baby is already making my sewing life SO much easier. I haven't used one of these since college and I didn't get one until now because 1) I didn't want to pay full price for a good one and 2) I didn't want to buy a really cheap one. I purchased this one from my mom's friend. Normally I wouldn't recommend buying sergers second-hand, but I knew owner, it had a manual with it, and I was able to give it a test run before hauling it away.

I digress. Back to the lacey gloves... I used the first glove to make a paper pattern for another glove. I cut out the piece of lace, trimmed the edge expecting a 1/4" seam allowance, then ran both edges through the serger (separately) in about a minute flat. Lastly, I placed the edges together and ran it through the sewing machine, leaving the thumb hole. Done!
I then changed the thread to black and made an extra black pair for Steampunk Batgirl.

That was over so fast that I made a third glove with the serger. The serged glove turned out much better than the straight-stitched glove! So then I fixed the first prototype glove by running the seam through the serger (keeping the thumb hole open). I have enough lace to make 7 extra pairs of white gloves, PLUS some black lace... this may be the start of a future Etsy store for me.

More information about sergers and how to use them:
http://sewing.about.cm/od/sergersoverlock/ss/serger.htm