Borderlands: TPS Cosplay - Nisha - Phase 1: In Which I Sewed Things

UPDATE 2/6/23: You can tell by the detail of my posts which projects I really cared about. The difference between these posts and, you know, the mood blanket challenge, that I was doing at the same time is very stark. This re-reading and checking the formatting that I'm doing has seriously been wild.

Finally, some headway with my Nisha cosplay! I predict that this will be one of my daytime costumes at Dragon*Con this year as it's probably best that I don't prance around the 90-degree daytime heat in Atlanta in my crochet Sailor Saturn. I believe this will be suitable for daytime?

A while back I went through my closet and rounded up things I already owned that I could potentially use. This included:

• a 10-year-old pair of jeans with a big hole in them
• a brown corduroy jacket almost as old as the jeans
• Uggs, because who doesn't have a pair of these in the back of their closet?
• a very old, real leather hat that belonged to my dead mom that is probably from the 80s that was grossly misshapen from things being put on top of it
• a white tank top

Crafting Nisha's Jacket From A Totally Different Jacket

My jacket had pockets and Nisha's jacket does not so I got my seam ripper, intending to remove the pockets. The jacket was so old that the whole thing just fell apart in my hands. There were huge holes and it was a hot mess. I did not fret. The jacket needed to be shorter so I chopped off the bottom and figured I could use the excess fabric to patch the holes where the pockets were.

I also planned to use excess fabric to create the other accents on the jacket. Basically, I wanted to only use parts of the original jacket to make the Nisha jacket. Yeah, recycling! Maximum awesome for cheapest cost possible (in this case...free)!

Some weeks passed and I got around to ordering the fingerless gloves and a black sports bra to go underneath my tank top. The last piece I need is a belt, but I'm planning on making a belt with scrap fabric. I don't need a functional belt, I just need a thing that looks like a belt and to make my belt loops look larger.

Some more weeks passed and I decided to spend an entire day sewing. I literally did all of the major sewing that I needed to do for this (I think). I'll probably have to do some very minor and speedy sewing when I get around to the belt.

Bobbin-Winding 101

I wound a bobbin and a disaster immediately happened...

That is how to not wind a bobbin. 

Onward With The Jacket!

After conquering bobbin-winding I patched the holes in the jacket with fabric from the jacket and made modifications to the collar. I'm going to need to go back and probably insert a bit of cardstock into the collar to make it stand because this jacket is so old the collar won't stay popped. This means a bit more sewing, but I think I can handle it. Maybe.

And here we have the jacket and other accessories. Everything is attached to everything it needs to be attached to. If you look closely you can see that my straps aren't all the same size and you can definitely see the seams where I repaired the pocket holes. I'm banking on my mad painting skills to hide these things. Yes, the entire costume will again be in the same rad, cel-shaded style of the game like my Zer0.

First, I need to get paint. I'm probably going to use Jones Tones again. It was great for my Zer0 suit, but I only have the colors for Zer0's Sneaking Suit and I need purple and pink and crap for Nisha - that's the next phase of this project.

Nisha's Shirt and Jeans

I did some cutting of a white tank top and I'm pretty excited to freehand the skull design on it. If I can get things set up then I'll do some time-lapse filming of the painting process. 

I patched and exerted the effort to take in the jeans because they were hella baggy. I patched them with excess fabric I cut away from the legs. The bottoms of the jeans will be tucked into my boots and I left just enough that they stay tucked. I'm going to be using more of the excess denim to make wider, fake belt loops. My belt buckle and the accents on Nisha's boots will be made of cardboard. I also need to remember to get fabric glue. Fabric glue and paint. Boom.

Once I round up the paint colors I need then I hope to spend at least one day a week working on this. If I pull this off then I'll also have a riveting blog post once a week as well. Knowing me, I'm going to continue procrastinating and will be forced to paint for hours and hours on end with no sleep in the days leading up to Dragon*Con.

I'm going to cheat and use my grenade and shield from last year and I may or may not get around to making myself some revolvers. If I do make revolvers they'll be made of trash, which is always fun. There are lots of WIP pictures of my Zer0 cosplay from last year over on Facebook. And a whole page dedicated to the build here if you're unfamiliar.