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Either way, I’ll see you guys on the other side of the convention! I can’t wait to share the finished product with you guys; I can’t wait to see it all together myself! 

Then I sew it all together! All the pieces fit together in a pretty straight forward fashion; the hardest part is just making sure the designs line up properly. That alone can be annoying, and there is a place the design doesn’t line up right, much to my demise. Can’t be perfect all the time, I suppose.

I do the same with the side pieces again. The design goes over where a zipper is going to go, so there’s a bit of an overlap in the design to make sure it stays as consistent as possible.

Now I’ve got the main piece that’s in black, with the design and the red leg already cut out. Cut this out, and then...

I did the same for the side pieces. The design on the front mirrors the back, so what I did was cut out the design from the front (you’ll need to, anyway) and use it to make sure it was exactly the same on the back.

To start, I have an old store bought unitard I use as a pattern. Do they sell side seam unitard patterns? Probably. But I botched the painting on this one many, many years ago and sort of gave up on finding a use for it, so it turned into my pattern. I got the measurements for my sister and went from there. This unitard is a size small, so I look up the measurements it was made for, compare them to the measurements of my sister, and go from there. Remember, when making a unitard with four way (two way for UK folks!) fabric, you want to take 90% of your measurement (plus seam allowance) to use when making the garment. For this I didn’t add a seam allowance because I had to measure over my sister’s clothes, which added enough bulk that I evened it out this way. If it’s a little small, it’s no problem because it’s stretchy!

So today, I’m going to talk a bit about Garnet’s unitard. I’ve made a few unitards in my time, but not one with this much extensive design work. So much hand sewing was involved! If you can machine sew these designs, I recommend it. I just know my machine has a thirst for lycra, so, honestly, this is the safer bet for me if I don’t want to have to wrestle fabric out of my machine every so often.

Despite the planning in my head, I bet I’ll be sewing in the hotel room. If not, it’ll be a first.

This has been a super fun build so far, and I’m just grateful it’s thrown me fewer curveballs than Pearl. I had to make Pearl’s skirt twice. I don’t know why she hates me.

Now we have limp sleeves without the shoulder pads! Yay!

Next, I sew up the sleeves. Garnet has puffy sleeves, generally square in season one. I’m not going to adhere 100% to the square shape (I want it to look like a ‘real’ version if I can!), but I want it to be close, so the sleeves are a bit big and I have them gathered at the top to make it easier for me to insert a square shoulder pad to get the look. For putting sleeves in, I like to turn the garment inside out with the sleeve right side out. Put the sleeve inside the garment, pin it, and it’s the easiest time you’ll ever have sewing sleeves.

I sew the design into it! It’s layered, so the black is on top of it because the stitching is nearly invisible on the black. Normally, I don’t layer designs like this, but this one had so many points this was the least headache-inducing way. We’ll see how well it holds up.

And then I cut out the design pieces and... yay! The dark pink is one solid piece with the light pink layered on top. I try to have as few seams as possible for comfort and stability reasons both, so there was no reason to not layer this. It’s just safer that way.

From there, I sketch the pattern onto this piece. These will be the design pieces I’ll use to make the badass pattern Garnet sports on her outfit. You see that sketchy mess in the corner? Make sure it makes sense to you, that’s all that matters. I could clearly see which lines I wanted to follow, but plenty of people couldn’t, I’m sure. It’s a mess. Using coloured sharpies will help you out if you’re like me and like to sketch it a bit before deciding for sure. I just like to torture myself with puzzles.

I use muslin (and a cat) to sketch the pattern out, folding it in the middle to make sure they sides mirror each other. Little is more annoying than a garment that is slightly different on both sides because you didn’t mirror properly.

Hello everyone! With AWA right around the corner, and me working the long day job hours every day leading up to the convention, the crunch is on! It never seems to matter how much I prepare, or how early I start, this always seems to happen. To add to it, another costume got added to the roster, though, thankfully, a very easy one to thrift for (that NEVER happens to me!), so it will only take a small amount of time to be completely ready! Two of the costumes are complete (except for the body gems...) with one being nearly finished, and another that will, hopefully, not take much work.