The story of how the Tim Curry x2 Cosplay came into being is as crazy as it is simple. We were planning on using our Joker and Harley cosplays for Saratoga Comicon’s Fall Show, but we found out the host for the cosplay competition was going to be a cosplayer who goes by The True Mr. J – who I would link up if I could find his info. As you’d expect, he’s a pretty awesome joker (and an uncanny Ace Ventura, as we found out) but suddenly going as Joker seemed daunting. This was two weeks before the show.
We ran through our list of “to-do” cosplays and, given the two week time frame, knocked out a whole bunch that would take much longer to put together. Sitting there on the list, though, was “Pennywise and Dr. Franknfurter” – a seemingly odd pairing, but appropriate. Both were Tim Curry, both are quite amazing, and they fit both of our personalities quite well – Pennywise is squarely in Kristin’s horror fandom and Dr. Franknfurter was fresh out of Colleen’s first fandom, ever. Seriously, who WOULDN’T want to be a singing alien transvestite embodied forever by none other than Tim-effing-Curry?
Since the question of which Frank-n-furter costume to wear is a no-brainer, I found some reference images and ran my butt to the craft store and stocked up on fabrics. This post will take you through the making of my first costume piece, the magical, magical cape.
I started out planning to just make the thing using my own brain meats as reference points. But, thank goodness, I wised up and decided to do the next best thing – find a free internet pattern. I would be remiss not to plug what became the framework for my cape, a free pattern from Fleece Fun that you can find here. It’s a 27-page printout that you tape together and then cut appropriately to use as a pattern, and she provides great directions on how to put it together if giant hooded fleece cloak is what you want. However, I wanted a much more “dracula” shaped cape, and I had the added challenge of making it black on one side and “lined” with silver on the inside, plus adding that sweet-ass collar. So, I took this pattern (if you look at it, I actually only printed pages 4,5,8,9,10,13,14,15,17,18,19,21,22,23,25,26,27) and then i followed the shoulder line where it is but drew a much straighter line down. If you look at the photo below, my cape was cut so narrow that it hit right near that arrow in box 21 that says where you should cut it if it was to be short. I want to say I picked up 4 yards of fabric in each of the types I used (more below) and made it by with some scrap and enough to do the collar.
Oh, that’s right, length. I literally laid on the floor on the pattern to figure out where I wanted to cut it at first, then I just left the fabric as long as it was (60?) and dealt with the hem later. Scientific, you know.
Back to the fabric – I used a cheap black satin for the outside, and a not-so-cheap vinyl/poly cosplay silver fabric for the inside. This turned out to be a HUGE blessing because, on day of con, it was literally 12 degrees outside and the vinyl/poly is NOT breathable so my body heat kept my scantily dressed self insulated quite nicely.
Now since the directions didn’t tell me how to make this cape with a lining in one color and the outside in the other, I had to figure that out. When you’re doing something where the inside is going to be visible, the whole “right side/wrong side” thing gets insane, especially when the directions say nothing and this is literally the first thing you’ve ever sewn from nothing. So…I made a tiny model.
Tiny models work wonders, I hand sewed this quick and my hedgehog pin cushion was the perfect model. What I learned here is that you just have to constantly check yourself and pay attention. So I cut the back of the cape (the pattern, set so the straight line is on a fold, yielding one big piece) and then put that piece on the floor, as I would see it on myself – so for the inside of the cape, that was silver, shiny side out. then i put the pattern on top of the left side of the cape the way it would need to be cut. But to cut the two front pieces, I had to do fabric “wrong side” up – so, as it was laid out on the ground with silver inside of the cape facing me, the silver would be touching silver – because the inside of the cape needed to wrap around. I hope that makes some sense. I had to do full visuals for myself like that to get through, and though it took some time it made sense and I cut ther ight pieces. Then once I cut the right pieces, I sewed all the silver together, then all the black together, and finally the silver to the black (this is when I fixed my hem and set a length) and the only thing I didn’t sew with the machine was the collar, I left that open so I could turn the cape rightside out once I was done sewing and I knew I was going to have some hand sewing to do at the collar anyway. Once this was done, I had what I referred to as a very fancy garment bag, shown below.
So how exactly did that collar come to fruition? Funny you ask, I’m not even sure if I can tell you. It started like this:
NOT kidding. That’s me, wearing card stock around my neck to figure out how the hell to make a collar. I just kept tweaking my paper until I got the shape right. Then, once I had an idea of the shape, I got some foam (the roll-up kind you can get in the craft store for cheap) since I wanted the collar to have a good, defined shape. Since I now had a cape, I knew how large I had to make the inside (longer than shown above for around my neck, for sure) and I used that measurement to cut my foam, so the foam would be as long as the whole inside of my cape neck cutout. From there, it really was just a matter of cutting a little off the foam and shaping as I went along. Tip: fold the darn thing in half so your sides are uniform, mine REALLY are even though they don’t look like it below, but that’s because I couldn’t hold the thing still for the photo.
So, the part at the bottom of that photo is the seam inside the cape neck, and the far upper right and left corners are the corners that point outward from you as you’re wearing it. I cut fabric to fit the inside and outside, and machine sewed them together on all sides except that flat collar side. then I slid my foam inside, and hand sewed the cape neck line to the collar. Viola! A cape!
Questions? Ask away! Next editions of Dr. Frank-N-Furter will include making the “corset” and accessories/makeup!
Vale of Shadows Cosplay 