Made by a Fabricista: Critical Ruffle

For the uninitiated, Critical Role is a group of nerdy voice actors playing Dungeons & Dragons every Thursday. I've already been a long time fan and cosplayer of the character Jester Lavorre from their second campaign (recently adapted to the animated series The Mighty Nein), but recently they started their fourth campaign! With this new campaign, we got a new cast of characters and I absolutely fell in love with the chaotic pink demon named Tyranny. 

When looking at my options for fabric for Tyrannys outfit, I found the perfect fabrics, a seafoam-blue polyester taffeta and a platinum colored charmeuse. The colors were perfect and I loved the combination of textures that felt appropriate for Tyrannys role as an aspirant of a religious order. 

When it came to patterning the cosplay, I used my go to bodice pattern, adjusting to have a zipper at center front that would be covered by the tabard that was also cut out of the taffeta stiffened with interfacing and with the charmeuse used to line it. For the lining of the bodice, I used remnants from my Fabric Mart project from a year ago, the soft cotton from my Nene Yashiro cosplay! 

I then cut the little capelet from both fabrics, and from the excess I free handed the shape of the peplum that goes on the bodice to reduce waste since luckily enough the curved edge from cutting the capelet out fit my waist perfectly! 

For the final pieces, I cut four yards to the length I needed for the skirt from the charmeuse, and a half circle from the taffeta for the veil. Not to mention yards, and yards, and YARDS of strips from both the charmeuse and taffeta for all the ruffles that Tyranny is drenched in. 

I got the bodice assembled, the veil hemmed, and then couldn't make much more progress without the ruffles, so for a week I did nothing but joining with French seams, hemming, pressing, and pleating the strips until I had an army of ruffles ready to go! After that it was quick to assemble, repeating the process of sandwiching the ruffles between outer and lining layers, flipping them to the right side out, and pressing them cleanly. 

Once the pieces were all fully assembled, it was time for my favorite part; tedious hand sewing! Tyranny has designs on her chest, shoulders, and tabard. For the tabard and the shoulders, I alternated faux pearls and long glass bugle beads for the sunshine design as well as the border of the tabbard, adding at the tip a clear dice bead left over from one of the other Critical Role cosplays and a little feather pendant as a nod to Tyranny's companion Wicander. 

For her moon cycles design, I used a scrap piece of the platinum charmeuse backed with a stiffer interfacing and traced a spool of thread to get the design. I kept it as one full piece to maintain spacing on the moons and used the quilting function on my machine to see the outlines of each moon to the front of the capelet, trimming the excess leaving a little bit of seam allowance. Once attached, I went around the edges by hand binding the edges with embroidery floss. 

For the last details on the dress, I found the perfect matching trim in my stash, with just enough to decorate the peplum, along the hem of the veil, and onto the large ruffle on the skirt. The tabard was finished off with some buttonholes and covered buttons to match. 

If you think the fun stopped there, nope! To avoid having to wear body paint on my arms, I found two way stretch cotton knit in my stash I bought from Fabric Mart years ago for something(?) and was the perfect color. In my opinion, pants are harder than gloves, just tracing the shape of the fingers and making a thumb piece. Since the fabric only had 2 way stretch, I couldn't rely on the stretch of the fabric to keep the gloves up, so I added buttonholes to the tops of the sleeves and coordinating covered buttons to the shoulders of the bodice so that I don't have to be concerned about them falling. The fingertips of the gloves got a bit of black paint before black fake nails were added to help sell the illusion of it being skin. 

With the final strips of charmeuse being sewn into a belt, Tyranny was finished! She was a labor of love from start to finish, I'm so excited to start my year strong with her, she's so comfortable and lightweight, I look forward to wearing her year round! 

 MINA  | @cosplaytology