Claire Setilan - Magna Carta 2
Worn April 2010 - started work in Decemeber 09!This was my epic, awesome, gonna-be-in-an-amazing-group costume for Wellington Armageddon 2010. We had a huge (like, 20 members huge) group of Magna Carta character planned, from all three games, but due to the incredible stress that is Hyung-Tae Kim's designs, half of us dropped out! We went onstage with 9 people, which was still a formidable effort, and won Best Group :) So - construction! Piece by piece: Petticoats - there are two. The bottom-most layer is a black tulle tutu, edge with scalloped rachel lace. Cheap, tacky, and PERFECT for a tutu! The over-petti was made from tulle with an overlay of black nylon mesh, topstitched into the shaded areas of Claire's petticoat visible in the game art. The detail was stitched on with embroidery thread, and the hearts were painted on then cut out. It has the butterfly butt-wings (lol) attached to the waistband. The wings are a double layer of stretch matte satin, heavily interfaced, with the detail painted on. They were then double-bound first in silver, then black satin binding to give the silver outline effect. I chose to do this rather than paint it because I wasn't at all confident in my ability to paint a perfectly straight line! Front painted panel - this was simply a big shape cut from the same stretch satin as the butt-wings, lined, painted, and double bound again. It sits on a waistband, flanked by two large black petals of the same black satin, with eyelet and lacing detail. Under-dress - the under-dress is a navy stretch polyester princess-lined dress with a flounced hem. I had intended to build it around a bra, but wound up simply stitching it to the bra and leaving it be - it was a very pretty bra! The cup detail was painted on, and the flower and ribbon detail added. Over-dress/tutu corset hybrid THING - This was basically a 6- panelled corset, shaped from the waist into 5 petals. It is boned with spring steel at each seam. and at darts between them - in the interests of keeping the petals as uniform as possible, I kept the panels to a minimum. After wearing this all day at the con, I discovered to my annoyance that I should only have boned it to the waist - because of the cutouts in the petals, there's not enough tension to keep the boning tight enough not to bend. So, I stuck out at funny angles, which was a bit lame. For the tutu, I used Dupioni silk, dyed it turquoise by mistake, decided I liked it anyway, and gradient-dyed at the tips to a darker royal blue. It's backed with a heavy navy cotton blend to strengthen it. The black detailing in front is the same black satin used elsewhere, appliqued and painted. The same technique was applied to the back detail below the lacing. The cuffs were gradient-dyed silk over satin, with the paint/cut edging method used, and just slide on over my wrists before being tied with ribbon. The umbrella isn't finished yet, but I bought a kid's umbrella and took off the rib tips and ferrule and spraypainted them black before putting them back on. The handle is a piece of aluminium tubing used for curtain rods (in fact, it is the same kind I have in my room! And man, is it a pain to cut...) slid up over the shaft of the umbrella to lengthen it. The base shape is sculpted, and is paper mache and paperclay, as per JiaJem's paperclay armour method. Only not as good, because I ran out of time and had to improvise! OH YEAH - and the shoes were bought from Xtoys - if that sounds like a sex shop, that's because it is. And their range of slutty shoes is second to NONE. They needed next to no work, just hot-glued the flowers on and I was done. I would like to go back and sculpt over the heel at some point, but that will have to wait until I have some free time. Photos thiefed from everywhere - facebook, the Vault of Souls (yeah, I still think that's funny :D), etc. I do plan on a proper shoot at some point - when I get over my camera!rage! EDIT: Photos updated! I took Claire to a studio shoot I organised in Auckland in July, and got some shots of some of our group members. I am a terrible, terrible model. One day I will learn to look nice in photos, but...not today. :) 
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