Cover Girl

Well, half of my cosplay friends (including my roommate) are currently off being badass cosplayers and partying at Katsucon, so what's a girl stuck at home in freezing Toronto to do? Work on my own badass cosplay I suppose XD

My next con is in 2 weeks, Kitchener Comic Con. I'm a little bit on the fence about what to wear - I want to stick with a comic character which leaves me with a decision between Pepper and Goldie (logistically Izabel isn't going to work for KCC). I'm leaning towards Pepper though since then I can coordinate with KW Iron Man, and Goldie isn't a terribly effective costume without other Sin City characters.

... But that's still not what I'm actually working on at the moment. Recently I've been putting together my Kate Bishop costume, a.k.a. "Princess Hawkguy". I'm doing her outfit from the cover art of Hawkeye issue 9, which is fairly casual. I like Kate, but I'm not yet sure I love the character enough to make her actual Hawkeye hero-outfit. 

Obviously, the most important part of this outfit is the iconic t-shirt. While an "I <3 hawkeye" shirt is available from We Love Fine, it doesn't match the cover art close enough for my taste. So I got a plain white t-shirt, purple fabric, and my stencilling supplies and went to town. --- Insert rant here about how difficult it is to find a white ladies t-shirt which is a) on a cosplay budget, b) not a low scoop- or v-neck, and c) not see-through. I almost wonder if I just should have made my own from scratch.---

Some notes on my artistic choices: the cover art of this issue (like all issues of Hawkeye) is highly stylized, especially in its use of colour. While the cover is black, white, and red; Kate always wears purple in the books. Always. So I interpreted the 3/4 length sleeves and contrasting collar to be purple, not black. Dark eggplant purple, granted, but still purple. Her shades are also going to be purple for my costume, again, referencing every other image in the books. I had thought about doing the heart and bullseye in purple too, to be consistent with my other choices, but in the end I decided that the shirt design really needed the "pop" of red.

First I noted where I wanted to new neck-line of the shirt to be since the original shirt was too snug at the neck. I cut off the excess, and sewed on a new purple neckband. Next was carefully tracing out the shape of the shirt's armscye (the arm hole) to match for the new purple sleeves. I stitched the purple sleeves right in to the existing sleeve's seam allowance, so I wanted it to match as closely as possible.

The stencil was done the same way I did Izabel's a few months ago. I traced the shirt design onto freezer paper (this time twice - once for red and once for black), ironed the stencil onto the shirt, and filled in the design with fabric paint. I did red first since the black arrow overlaps the heart, removed the red stencil, carefully lined up the black stencil, and then finished with the second colour. And there you have it, one Princess Hawkguy shirt.

Most of the rest of the costume is purchased pieces. My long-distance bestie Kurumasha is also cosplaying Kate Bishop but in a different outfit, so we are coordinating parts of the costume. We both got the same boots, sunglasses, and wigs since it's the same girl and we're dorks LOL.

So what is left to work on this weekend? some rather important props! I have commissioned KW Stark Resilient to make my bow, but I'm going to make my quiver and arrows myself. It's the first prop piece I've made in a very long time, but I'm sure I can handle it. As long as everything runs smoothly, I'm going to be wearing Princess Hawkguy at Ad-Astra (maybe with Kurumasha) and at C2E2 with Chris & Carrie and friends.

I'm psyched.