Silk Maiden Alice: The "WTF Was I Thinking Making This" Cosplay

So now that Naka-kon is over and it has been debuted, I'm going to post how i made my American Mcgee's Alice Silk Maiden cosplay.
This was one of my top favorite dresses in the game and I wanted to cosplay it SO badly. The problem was the FABRIC. There is NOTHING out there that comes even close to matching this dresses fabric pattern, so I had no idea what to do. I ran into a friend on DA though who had done the cosplay and had hand painted all of the fabric and said, "Why didn't I think of that!"(Her Account) Her dress was incredible and I was so impressed with the painting. I initially thought there was no way I could do it, but after I speaking with her and getting some helpful hints and encouragement, I decided to give it a try. After all what could I lose? (except a shit load of money)
Why a bunch of money?

Because Neopaque Fabric Paint is expensive as shit.

Its about 5 bucks a bottle and I needed A LOT of it.

Using a different paint wasn't really an option since everyone I talked about this (which was a lot) said, "OMG Neopaque or nothing, it's the best!" So I used it, and was very glad I did. That stuff is legit.

But we'll get to the painting later..
To begin I hand drafted a pattern.
I used muslin so I could put it on my purty new dress form and adjust it as needed. This was the first time hand drafting a pattern on my own so it was a learning experience. My friend taught me how to do it on muslin, but I also had been show the same thing with newspaper. So to practice using both I drafted Saeko's shirt with newspaper and Alice's dress with muslin since it was more appropriate. This all may seem like a given to you all who have more experience, but I'm new at this so STFU. I know its all very basic :'(

I winged it on the shapes for the bodice and was lucky it tuned out OK. The rest was pretty self explanatory, a lot of rectangles and such.

After getting the pattern I liked, I started painting..

Started with the sleeves. I used Neopaque Lumieres paint because I hoped it would make the flowers look like they were apart of the silk, or screen painted. I used super opaque neopaque white as a base so the colors would POP.

I taped everything down on top of some newspaper so it wouldn't move or mess up my mom's nice table.

I got lazy and lost the newspaper eventually. I had to do this in the kitchen and our TV in there doesn't have cable, just a DVD player. So I busted out my Ghost in the Shell DVD's and some good old Metalocalypse to get me though all the painting.

As I made this I attempted to make get my painting as close as i could to the reference pictures I screen capped. Not just in how the flower's, leaves, and butterflies looked, but also where they were placed. It didn't end up perfect but it was pretty damn close.

I used an iron on the back of each piece per the paint's instructions to set the paint or whatever.

When I first started doing this I was all like..

Then I got to the largest piece and..

I trudged through though.

Last thing to paint was the Apron. I just used the same muslin I used for pattern make and doubled it up when I was finish painting it.

(Symbols don't show up every well thanks to my camera phone.)

After All painting was done the next thing I did was construct the top.

Starting to look more like a Kimono!

I made the Ruffle for the neck line next. I cut some strip of fabric using my Muslin again and folded them over. Then I pressed them and pinned them so my ruffles wouldn't look derpy since I'm not talented enough to make them as I put it through the machine yet.

The result..


After making the ruffle I sandwiched it between the painted fabric pieces and some duplicate pieces I made so I could line it, then sewed it closed.

I attached them at the shoulders..

And there you go!

So pwetty :o I attached the sides and then basted my skirt and attached it to the bottom. Before I attached the sleeves I drafted a pattern for my apron and obi. As you can see from the picture, for the inside of my obi I used a very stiff interfacing. I'll get to that more later... >o>

Then next there was sleeves... God I hate sleeves.

First I sewed the ribbons onto the cuffs. That was very time consuming but good practice for sewing strait lines, holy crap. Next I basted my sleeves and made that oh so wonderful POOF. I have to say I did significantly better basting/sewing these sleeves compared to my first Alice costume, which made me happy :).

.... stupid sleeves. Now back to the obi. Instead of layering this with two pieces of stiff interfacing to get the two different colors, I stuck with one to avoid making it super bulky. What I did was I covered the interfacing piece with the light pink fabric first by making a "tube" for it, then sewed the dark pink on top of that, making this..

Sorry, photo is upside down.. Then to make it somewhat adjustable but still secured, I sewed a few pieces of Velcro to each side.

The bow was attached via two humongous snap buttons that I don't have a picture of. The Bow itself was essentially just two long rectangle met together then the dark pink one was placed on top of the light pink one and sewed together.

For the obi's mask... I originally made this out of a different material and it was a colossal failure. My first one looked better than the final product, because model magic is really hard to get nice details out of, but you live and learn I guess :( For the second version, I drew out the size I wanted on paper then used an aluminum foil base and covered it with model magic. I sculpted the features, let it dry, then painted over it with acrylic and sealed it all with Modge Podge. After that I covered the back of it with felt and hot glued two long clips to the back which slid easily into the bows holding it in place :)

Last (even though it wasn't made last) we have my underskirt. Since in the game if you look up Alice's skirt (not that I did or anything) you can see that she does have a petticoat underneath, and the the ruffle isn't just attached to the bottom. I could have just attached it to the bottom, but I did that with my wonderland Alice, and in a few photographs I noticed it showing and it really bothered me that I didn't put something underneath. So I decided to do it right with this dress. This was pretty strait forward.. I sewed a long tube out of an even lighter pink then I used for the obi, and then pinned it into a ruffle on the edge of my shear fabric.

After sewing it, I gathered the top over some elastic that fit my waist and closed it up.

And then when you put all those things together you get...

ALICES'S SILK MAIDEN DRESS!!

The top two photo's don't include the turquoise and dark blue cords that tie around the obi, I wore them later. Other than that, There it is! This cosplay was really a challenge and a blast to make. If you have any questions feel free to contact me! You can find all my profiles under my contact tab ^.^ Thanks so much for taking the time to check out my process. I'll leave you with a few photos taken by the amazing Max Phillips! If you want to see more make sure you visit my Deviant Art page and have a look! Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Caterpillar to find.. Photo by Vangaurd Imageworks Image is subject to copyright do not use or alter without consent *Click to see full size!* Photo by Vangaurd Imageworks Image is subject to copyright do not use or alter without consent *Click to see full size!* Photo by Vangaurd Imageworks Image is subject to copyright do not use or alter without consent *Click to see full size!* Thanks for stopping by! -QK

Making Alice

I don't intend for this to be a "how to make" post. I just wanted to show what and how I made it so maybe it helps someone out a little. Or if anyone for whatever reason wants proof I made it, well here it is..

This was the first cosplay I've made entirely by myself with no help. I'm pretty excited about it and it's made me feel much more confident when it comes to sewing.

My reference if anyone doesn't know who I'm creating. Alice from American Mcgee's Alice Madness Returns wonderland dress.

Anyway to start I made this dress using a modified McCalls M4948 pattern.

   Simple enough

My dog is helping sew of course. And by helping I mean making it very difficult..

Just following the pattern right now. If you need help reading the pattern I suggest youtubing it. that's what I did to figure out the hieroglyphics in them.

This is where some adjusting came in. As you can see from the picture on the pattern the apron top is square, so I had to make it a swoop neck and bring the apron's shape in on the bottom so it would look more like Alice's. I also had to make a back to match the front since Alice's apron comes down in the back, and the pattern had no back.

Coming together following the pattern.

The most frustrating part of this cosplay was these damn "poof sleeves" as I call them. It was so hard to get the adjusted so they weren't ridiculously large and they still ended up imo a little too big but i got over it. I hated gathering them UGH..

FINALLY got the sleeve attached to the bodice. I ended up adding the cuff and doing the same on the other side. After I put the first sleeve on I left the dress for a while because it was such a pain for me.

After the sleeves were attached I added the bottom of the dress. There was A LOT of hand basting done to make that happen. The pattern also made the dress way longer then I wanted it so next I had to shorten it. After this point i didn't get as many WIP pics because I was rushing to get it done 2 days before a con (freaking procrastination)..

I shortened it and added some white cotton trim. I don't know the official name for the type of trim for it >.> it has little eyelets on it though.

Again missing some pics after this but I basically added the bottom of the apron and the waist band. I improvised at this point because the bow is completley different then the pattern. I made a long waitst bad that tied in the back. I made a square of fabric with some stiff interfacing in it and tied it in the center with the waistband making a big bow! It would have looked really wierd if the skull didn't cover it. There was probably a better way to make this but with my lack of sewing knowledge and being short on time, this was simply going to have to work. The skull was just a table top skull decoration from the Halloween store and I attached a clip to the back of it with hot glue so it could come on and off of the bow easily.

^ Here's an example. This also shows the back where I put in the invisible zipper. It was my first time ever putting in one and my friend who is a professional seamstress told me she even still had problems with them so I was overjoyed to put in mine -_- (sarcasm) but it actually wasn't THAT bad. It definitely didn't turn out perfect but way better than I had though it would.

I made my own pattern for the pockets and added the Jupiter and Iris sybols to them using a double sided iron on fabric attacher stuff I found (I have no idea what it was called sorry) I cut the symbols out of black fabric and applied them using that.

When I debut it at Nebkon it wasn't completely done I suppose. I didn't add any blood to it, not because of a time issue but because I had just made my first dress on my own and didn't want to "ruin" it. I did later but I was really hesitant at first. I figured it's easier to Photoshop blood out of a dress then put it on there an make it look consistent. I also decided to scrap my first Omega necklace because I decided it was WAY to large.

Me at Nebkon

So to make Omega Necklace 2.0 I used the exact same method I used for the first one.

I made it out of sculpty and baked it. Then I was going to paint it with some metallic silver acrylic paint I bought but for some reason it wasn't going on well so I decided to spray paint it with some silver I already had.

After that I cut a piece of wire and made a loop out of it, hot glued the loop to the back of the symbol. Then I used a jewelry loop and attached a chain I made using some jewelry clasps.

For the blood...

I decided to used acrylic paint. Don't ask me why. I had some spray on special effects blood but it was too red and fake looking and unpredictable when sprayed. So made my own color using acrylic paints and painted it on. I probably won't be able to wash the dress because of that (it's retired anyway) and I realize I should have used fabric paint but I was in a hurry and I like acrylic soo yeah..

I was trying to get as close to the art on the cover of the game as possible.

BLOOD!! Yummy.

Wig was from Epic Cosplay because Arda didn't have what I needed in stock. And the contacts are Dolly Eye Green bought from PinkyParadise. My friend from Linda Pop Designs did my makeup for me for the con and my photoshoot.

And so the end result is...

The end result! I made a hobby horse as well which is not shown. You can see the info on how I made it HERE My photo were taken by Max Phillips http://www.modelmayhem.com/1728741 My makeup was done by Linda http://linda-pop.deviantart.com/ If you want to see the rest of the photos from our photo shoot go to my deviantart account http://missqueenkong.deviantart.com/ If you have any questions or if I forgot something feel free to ask and i'll answer best I can. Thanks for stopping by