Captain America Cosplay - The Night Before Ultron

Well, all my freaking out over this costume was definitely warranted. I'm literally still working on the final touches right now (8:30pm, on the 29th) -- finishing the shield harness, doing some extra work on the knee pads, altering the gloves I bought on Monday... oh and hemming the bodice (I'm dreading that, for some reason or other...) BUT, don't worry, because those are all that's left to do before I'm all set for a photo shoot and seeing Avengers: Age of Ultron tomorrow.

IT'S TOMORROW, GUYS. *FLAILS*

Okay, no joke, I've been getting that feeling of excitement in the pit of my stomach and chills running up my back all. stinking. day. It's kind of ridiculous. It happens whenever I imagine something cool, or think about the itinerary of the day, or during pretty much the entire time I was listening to the soundtrack for the movie. So weird, but I'm come to accept it as part of the fangirl life. ;D

So sorry for the mini fangirl sesh, but now it really is time to get into some hopefully quick and dirty progress reports, with tons of pics, on this ALMOST COMPLETED costume. :D

Pants:

In a moment of genius, the pants got upgraded. They now feature red stripes down the side of the thighs and knee pads with red accent stitching, to emulate a bit of the look of Cap's actual pants (while avoiding some of the, imho, frumpiness). The details really helped the look of the pants, so now they're not boring. ;)

(Sorry, no full picture of the pants to share... I can't give the whole costume away, right?? ;D)

Guantlets:

For all the leather parts of this costume, I overlaid upholstery leather (left over from my Tauriel costume) with the new apparel leather I bought for the costume (which is kind of gorgeous, really). Though this ended up looking quite nice, it was a complete pain in the neck to actually sew and deal with. Not only did it take forever to prepare all the pieces for sewing, the process of sewing itself also was crazy. Like I said in my previous post, my machine hated sewing so many layers of leather, and especially the delicate and slippery apparel leather. But no matter - with God's help, I got it done.

As for the actual guantlets, I just made up the design through a bit of trial and error, added a bit of decorative stitching, and used short lengths of elastic for the closures, with the first piece connected with velcro, so I can properly get my hand through. ;) I'll be wearing the gloves, that I'm currently altering to be fingerless and a darker color brown, underneath these.

Bodice:

Not too much different here, just finished the ab stripes, collar, and added the star and details surrounding.

I backed the star I made from a sheet of aluminum with craft foam, to make the back flat, so that I could then attach velcro triangles to each of the points for attaching the star to the bodice. I was originally going to sew it to the bodice, but I figured the velcro would work better and be faster to do -- and I was right. ;)

Belt and harness hardware:

This was the funnest and easiest part of making this costume: spray painting the belt buckle, and tri-glides + buckle thing for the harness. Hah! ;D No, but really -- I'd actually never used spray paint before in my life. Let me tell you, the stuff is magical. Totes my new BFF.

Before...

Not-so-secret weapon...

And after!!

It's actually not as big as it looks, but it really was almost perfect for the back harness buckle!

Belt:

Fairly simple build here: just drafted up a quick pattern, cut all the leather pieces out, sewing, then adding the buckle with extra leather strips. But, I am seriously SO bummed that I didn't have time to make the utility pouches to go with it!!! The belt still works without them, (and makes for a surprisingly nice, sleek look) but still... it would have been so good to have them. But, can't do everything, right? :P

And lastly, the shield harness:

This was a bit complicated, just figuring out the right shape and all, plus sewing all the pieces was crazy annoying... and it's not even finished yet. I'm taking a very extended break from finishing it to write this (I CAN ONLY TAKE SO MUCH AT ONCE. xD)... but only have to sew extra strips of leather with the tri-gliders to the base harness, so that should be pretty simple.

And that... is... a... WRAP on the creation of my Captain America cosplay! I hope you enjoyed watching the progress, and I am so excited to share with you pictures of the final product as my first post for May.

How are you guys' costumes for Age of Ultron (if you're wearing one!) coming along?? Who's seeing it this weekend??? AND WHO'S EXCITED????? :D :D