Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Avoiding the Cardassian, and a Romulan takes shape

So, what have I been doing? Well, I've been avoiding my Cardassian uniform. Yup. Epoxying the cuirass was just too daunting, so I merrily avoided working on it.
Instead, I worked on my Romulan uniform. I cut out all of the pieces the other night, using Simplicity 2285, view D, as a jumping off point. If you look closely at Romulan uniforms, you can see that it's double-breasted, but it blends so well into the quilting lines and the pattern of the fabric that it's hard to tell. You can also see that the jacket doesn't actually have the standing collar, but that the collar belongs to some sort of undershirt or Dickie, and that the jacket has either a round or square neckline, depending on the rank of the officer and style of the uniform.

So, anyway, I cut out the modified pattern, along with some interfacing and some quilting. Then, I started to assemble. And quilting. And I kept quilting. And then, I quilted some more.
By the end of day/morning one, I had everything cut out, and I had one front panel quilted. After six hours of work. Ugh. At this point, it looks nothing like a Romulan uniform, but I'm not worried about it. There's still so far to go, and I know it'll take shape as I go along.

Day two, I managed to attach the side-front panel, quilt it, quilt the other front panel, and attach the corresponding side-front panel for that side. I also trimmed the neckline, since it was a bit high, but I'm going to go back and square it out more after looking at my reference pics again. I think that right now it looks like something from Repo! The Genetic Opera or from the old school Dr. Who. lol It definitely needs more fitting, but that will come.

So, today, I finally got over it and started epoxying my Cardassian armour. The instructions recommended that I do it at room temperature (70F), but in order to have the proper ventilation, I had to do it outside, where it's currently over 100F. So, it cut down on my work time, but it also meant the my curing time was also going to be cut down. I know this because the leftover resin in the container was rock solid with 20 minutes of me finishing the first layer on the armour. :p I'm still going to let it cure overnight, and then I'm going to epoxy the inside to give a layer of protection against sweat (it's going to be August in Vegas...there will be sweat) and to add a little more stiffening.



There she is, curing away. I'm pretty pleased with how it's turning out, though I'm debating now whether or not to add the plasti-dip at this point. The finish from the epoxy is really nice, and I could just go ahead and apply the paint directly to the epoxied surface. We'll see how I feel in a couple of days, after the other layers of resin have been applied. :)

1 comment:

  1. I love that you're rockin' the 90s/Next Gen styles!

    Your costumes are going to be amazing.

    ReplyDelete

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