Miss Sophia Forrester reporting for duty! Everything from the design to the finished costume was a little tricky with this one, especially with a time constraint to work under. Casted in Metrocon’s Fantasy Masquerade show “The Princess Who Wasn’t: A Steampunk Fairy Tale,” I suppose it’s fairly obvious that I had to go a little steampunk with the costume. Unfortunately, being from a steampunk-esque show and being of a military design, I couldn’t add much. I wound up working the most with color changes, going from a white and silver design to a copper and silver one. As this happened before the events of Last Exile in our AU, Sophia had not yet joined the Silvanna, and worked instead for a very arrogant Prince Zechs Merquise, leading to a change in the sleeve design from the Silvanna crest to one lifted from the OZ uniforms.

I was excited to find some concept art that showed seams – less so when I realized that the seams pictured were pretty much impossible. We wound up taking a fitted dress pattern, something Asian in style, and cut it to the right length, lengthening the sleeves and adding a Mandarin collar. And changing the front to include a zipper: zippers were the theme of this costume. The one in the front had to be visible, and was actually our first time putting in a visible one. Before we put it all together, I pinned on the braiding in the designs I needed and we sewed them all on – the sleeves were the biggest pain. The sleeves were left unfinished after being put into the dress, and we went on to the visible zipper and the invisible zipper in the back. Afterward, the cuffs were put up, and then I put in small zippers in each cuff. Zippers EVERYWHERE. I still have a love/hate relationship with hemming by hand. I refuse to hem any other way when its not pants being tucked into boots, but it’s still hard for me.

So that took care of the dress! It got little accessories after that – sewing the buttons on took forever to get them even. I also molded a zipper pull in the shape of a lightning bolt for the “Lightning Count.” The boots were a thrift-store salvage, with the sole painted with black acrylic paint. In the future, I might cut the boots to put in a working zipper, but right now, the zippers are glued onto the boot. The belt was a length of jewelry chain, held together by a clip. The holster came from Wal-Mart, painted with copper fabric paint. The resin gun came from our producer; I painted it with black metallic spray paint and added some gears to cover the company logo.

The wig was an interesting task. It’s an Ashley 850 in 12. I combed out the little dangle portions and braided the portion to be put in the cylinder and used some plastic decoration wraps: one would have left a “half” spiral, while two made that closed cylinder shape. I used yellow rubber bands on the top and bottom of those cylinders. I then cut the dangles right at the bottom of the rubber band. The gold decorations were made from two beads in exactly the right shape, with some copper wire twisted to push into the bottom of the hair. The effect was better than I thought it would be. The bun was much, much harder. I braided the hair on either side, twisted those two braids together, and managed to get a clip on it. I was just fooling around when they got into the right shape, so… I still am not sure exactly how I did it, oops. I’ll know soon, though, since I have to redo the bun. The clip was simply bought and painted – in the future, I plan to mold one in the right shape.

And I finally got a costume where I could wear my own glasses! When I make a non-AU version, I will be making my first pair of prop glasses. I’m terrified.

I had a lot of fun working on this character and interacting throughout Metrocon 2009. I think that’s my favorite part of the costume – the fact that I got to play in character so much and had a great cast supporting me. I have a lot of memories attached to this costume!