Bishoujo Rogue Jacket

Home sick, so have a post!

For my initial run through with my animated Rogue costume, I bought a bomber jacket off of eBay for a pretty reasonable price. It was okay, but I was roasting by the end of the day, and the jacket really wasn’t a good fit. So I kind of freaked out when Cathy of God Save the Queen Fashions announced she was selling extras of her Rogue jacket patterns.

My biggest challenge with this was resizing. The pattern only came in a S/M fitting up to a 36” bust and I’m a 42” bust with no *ahem* enhancements. My first step was to cut out the pattern pieces and adjust the sizes on pattern paper. Once I got an idea of the changes I needed to make, I cut the resized pieces out of duck cloth and scrap muslin for a mock-up.

I won’t do a tutorial on here, but I will direct you to a few websites that really helped me out: Threads, Pattern Cutting Tutorial (YouTube), Pattern Grading 101, Easy Pattern Grading — The “Quick and Dirty” Method, and Making the Grade. WindoftheStars just recently put up a great video tutorial that gives you an idea of how to resize patterns. Just be sure to double-check your measurements and make a copy of your pattern before cutting! If you mess up, at least you’ll have a backup. I overshot some of my calculations (hence some of the weird bubbles), so I’m planning to go back to the original pattern and make a new jacket when I have some free time.

I’m so happy that I made this jacket. It was a fair amount of effort, but Cathy did all the hard parts and made a fantastic tutorial, available on her flickr. I got so many compliments on the new jacket at Dragon Con, and I feel like it really brought the costume together.

Protip for using pleather: If you don’t already have one, invest in a teflon foot. I used spare tissue paper to help guide my foot along, but it was really annoying and time-consuming.

I had the pleasure of running into Cathy at Dragon Con! She said she saw the jacket on the escalator and ran up to meet me. I had a major fangirl moment.

Met the amazingly awesome and talented* @gstqfashions at #DragonCon while wearing my new Rogue jacket! pic.twitter.com/0QjC6Wz8SO

— Mindy Tomlin (@librarianmindy) September 1, 2013

And shortly after the con, I bought this beauty 🙂 I’m planning to make a new pair of boot covers, update my wig, and make new belts to go full Bishoujo at a con next year, probably NYCC. So buying the statue was research… right? 😉

*Apparently I can’t spell on my phone and forgot the “t”. Oops 😛

EDIT: By the way, Cathy now sells several of her patterns on a regular basis in her store!