Modesty's Costume Closet

Even though I started this costume back in April, it feels like I'm down to the wire on this. My time perception is so dumb sometimes. There are only a few more things to do.  1. The Mask + Kimono Got the kimono pretty much done.  The Kitsune Mask is painted and sealed with varnish. I added the macrame cord and elastic and the wisteria resin charm.  Fixed the nose! 2. Goro Puppet I've had my head down with the puppet for the past couple weeks. It's coming along! I attached the ears AND made the front paws. Fixed the body girth and added stuffing here and there. I need to fix one of the arms that's gone a bit wonky. BUT I think the claws on the front paws came out very cute! And the head looks so nice with the ears on.  I attached the head to the neck and closed up a few more seams. Made a few mistakes that I'm going to cover with extra fluff. 😅 I'm still fiddling with the stomach opening for my hand and I need to make the tails. I think that will be my goal for

The Goro puppet project has been going on quietly in the background. It is a learning experience and some things are going very much to plan while other things are decidedly not.  My first positive is the back scales:  I was able to crochet the back in a few hours. (Not in one sitting mind you.) I mixed metal with plastic scales which has a fun effect. I still have some left over plastic scales that I could sew into the body but I like how this looks.  Victory 2: Body Structure While the head has been my main focus I was able to take a break from that and morph some EVA foam sheets into a makeshift skeleton for the body.  Positive 3: Started the yarn tails to see how they'll look compared to the body size. I've done this before so feel confident that I can do it again.  Positive 4: While I did burn myself with hot glue, I made some ears with minky, stiff felt, and a bit of faux fur. I even painted them so the markings are correct.  Positive 5: Mouth contructed! I put in the jaw

The head of a puppet is the most work-heavy portion of the project. It does the heavy lifting of making this a puppet and not a doll. Today, I will show how I've patterned out the head which will be covered in fabric.  Patterning Process  First, the head was wrapped with saran and taped with masking tape. I made sure the jaw was mostly open while doing this. This will cause some "pucker" in the fabric around the mouth which I do want.   Next, I draw stitch lines. and color change areas. This is something I did by feeling and past experience making stuffed animals. I knew where the nose would be and where the eyes should go and their shape. I marked lines were the color will change from silver to white on the face. The other lines are just where I thought stitch lines would look good.  Then, I cut the masking tape along the stitch lines and removed it from the 3D printed head.  Finally, I cut darts until flattened. I do this by finding corners and cutting straight into the

 Since I have settled on a front-carrying design, I started delving into more research on making hand puppets in general.  Size Reference Diagram The Plan (Currently) Most of the sculpting will be done with 3D printing instead of clay. I just prefer to do things this way. The body framework will include armature wire, EVA foam, and I will most likely sculpt the paws from clay. I plan to cover the body with a mix of felt, Minky, and brushed-out acrylic yarn. The puppet will open and close its mouth and blink.  Prep Work  So far I've been doing a search for 3D models and finding the scale. Once I found a good base for the head, I had to figure out how big this thing would be. I found my oversized drawing paper, traced my arm in the "puppet position", then started building out the puppet around it. I will use the drawing as a guide when creating the frame of the body and sculpting the paws.  3D Models I'm using several free 3D models by Tioh on Thingiverse including the

 When I originally started thinking about a puppet-related costume, I came up with three ideas: Rod/Cable Puppet Kasugai Crow Hand Puppet Goro the Kitsune Walk-along/marionette Kirin/Unicorn The reality is I can't do it all. As you may surmise from the title of this post, my focus for now is on the Goro puppet. Like I said, I had been plotting out all three and have some pretty interesting research results from my time spent figuring out how to make a crow, but I'd be much happier making yet another kitsune. I have the things that I like! And right now, it's Demon Slayer, My Hero Academia, and Kitsune. I'm simple like that.  I'm rambling, aren't I? The Inspiration and Initial Research The character I have in mind is from my visual novel project (6 years so far in the making). He is highly anthropomorphized, expressive, and mischievous. However, I have never made a puppet of this nature so I need to ensure I do not over-complicate the design.  His beast form At t

I get on kicks or fads every so often. Lately, I've been bitten by a knitting bug...and while researching those techniques brought up an old video I had watched about someone building a big sleeve dragon puppet, and it was all over from there. Now, I'm on a puppet kick. Puppet props, not puppet costumes like fursuits. That's a post for another time.  Design Considerations Size and Weight For any prop, you need to carry around or transport, you must consider how big it is and its weight. I'm not saying your puppet has to be small and lightweight...but know your limits. You don't want it to be so light that it breaks easily, either. I guess durability  is another feature you'd want to consider.  Desired motion and manipulation style How do you want the puppet to move? Will it open and close its mouth? Wiggle its ears? Blink? Wink? Have glowing eyes? Walk!? Once you decide how you want it to move, you need to figure out how to make that motion happen with the struc

This shall be my final entry for Demon Slayer Knitting...for now. These are fun little extra dood-dads and accessories worn by the characters. I will note that some of these are crochet patterns and not knitting patterns. Honestly for stuffed animals I prefer crochet. Call the Crows! Crows and Sparrows A common companion for any demon slayer is their kasugai crow...or some other bird. I've collected a few patterns for knitting or crocheting your own crow or sparrow.  Knitted Aviary ($) Songbird Crochet Bird Knit Nature: Blue Tit Tree Sparrow ($) Raven Doll Nevermore! Easy Raven Raven Amigurumi Bald Eagle  (Hear me out. Crows can get very big and in the show they kind of look like this. Just make it all black and grey.) Inosuke's Boar Mask It won't be show/manga accurate but it will still technically work. Create a monster style ski-mask, baclava or beanie.  Hog Beanie ($) Baby Back Hog Hat ($) Oink Piggy Hat Zombie Pig Mask ($) Pirate Piggy Mask Trav's Baclava  <--Ba

 When I was getting started with 3D printing, of course the first big decision was "which machine will I get". It's one of those things where there's not necessarily a wrong answer, but there could be a best choice.  I am very pleased with the machine I ended up with, but I think this was partially dumb luck. It's hard to know what you don't know! And therefore...it's hard to know where to start without a guide. (My guide was a YouTube channel dedicated to printing miniatures for Table Top games, not costumes.) If by some cosmic coincidence this blog is your first exposure, then allow me to make some suggestions on where to start and some of the questions to ask.  What do you want to 3D Print? Oddly enough this will be a major decision factor into the machine (or machines) you decide to purchase. What kinds of things will you be 3D printing a majority of the time? While you can do pretty much all things with a 3D printer given some proper adjustments, some

This weekend was not very productive on the costume or knitting front. But I did do a bit of online shopping and wish-listing for possible props for Wisteria Fox.  Silk Wisteria branch. Some of the ideas for props or accessories I had were:  Mask Oil-Paper Parasol Folding Fan Paper Lantern Wisteria flowers  Fangs Kanzashi Claw nails Character Guiding Principles But I can't nor should do all of these. In these situations, I can use what I'll call "character guiding principles" to narrow down what would be appropriate and other decorating themes. If you are thinking of a character, these are just a cluster of traits or words that you can associate with them. Then when considering props you can weigh if the item fits or pick a color that works best.  For example, Captain America is patriotic and protective. The shield as a prop makes sense to these principles because the primary purpose of the shield is to protect the ones behind it which is what Steve Rogers is known fo

  Three Finished Swords Took most of the weekend but I finished the work I wanted to do on the Demon Slayer Swords. I could do a tinge of touch up but I'll get to that later.  To see how these blades started see:  3D Printing Sword Adventures . I'll start with Tanjiro's blade as it took arguably the least amount of work.  Tanjiro's Sword Most of the sword is black in color with some silver trim and a touch of red. The whole thing was printed with black PLA. However, I still coated everything with the grey filler primer. Globbed on gesso and after sanding down the first coat, applied the 2nd coat of filler and sanded that down.  All the parts in black were sprayed with Rustoleum Glossy Black. I filled in the red handle decor with red color shift paint.  Used a bit of nail polish top coat as a base. The silver bits were sprayed with a lovely chrome spray paint. Very reflective! After things dried, I assembled the sword parts. Added a touch of glue and called it finished.