Of course I did not want to be something I thought a lot of other people would be, so I ended up on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Meaning, no one understood my costume. And no, I am not from Star Trek.
I decided to be Minmei from Robotech! Which is kind of weird because I never could stand Minmei. I would much rather have been Lisa, but I could not figure out how to make her uniform. So, Minmei it was. The tricky part was finding a dress pattern with the right neckline, and then finding a yellow turtleneck at the last minute.
For my Minmei costume, I ended up using Simplicity 2062 because it had the right neckline. The problem is that the "V" was created using a contrasting piece of fabric on top of the existing neckline...so no actual "V,"(or maybe I should say "pointy-U"). Not fun to figure out two nights before you need the costume.
My solution? Trim an additional one-half inch off the neckline (not the rounded collar part) and finish it with red double-fold bias tape for the entire neckline. I probably should have trimmed at least one-inch, but I erred on the side of caution because it is really difficult to correct a cutting of mistake. Why double-fold bias tape? Because I figured I could do the outside corners (located at the top, where a collar might be) like I would when I do mitered binding on a blanket; and I could do the inside corners in the square neckline style. It worked!
The dress pattern is not very fitted (Minmei's is), or short (Minmei's is not), but I think using knit fabric helped. It also meant that I did not have to worry about frayed edges or sew a zipper into the dress. Other things I did to make this pattern work me included not attaching a contrast band around the hemline; cut the sleeves to what I think is the elbow line on the pattern; and used gray single-fold bias tape for the detail. As far as the body of the dress goes, I held up the dress front, and pinned the bias tape to the dress, and took measurements to make it somewhat even on the other side.
As I said earlier, one of the hardest things was finding a yellow, long-sleeve turtleneck. If I had thought about this earlier, I probably could have found one a lot easier. I settled for a mustard yellow turtleneck from American Apparel.
Minus the Star Trek thing, I am pretty happy with the way this turned out. And while it did not work for Halloween on the Hermosa Pier, I am ready for Comic-Con...if I ever decide to go again and dress in costume (something I have never done).
By the way, in case you do not know Robotech, here is a picture of Lynn Minmei.
No comments:
Post a Comment