AnimeUSA 2019 Con Report

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been able to sit down and write a post! I have a bunch of tutorial stuff that I’ve been working on, some build books, etc but here’s a quick post about the con!

Obligatory quick-link block:

Now, onto the blogging!

It was GREAT and when I say GREAT I mean GREAT making new friends here!! We got in super-late on Thursday night due to the weather and having to make two trips down there to carry our luggage and persons in the Smart Car. It meant that I got to spend some extra time working on things on Thursday but I was super brain-dead from the all-nighter I pulled, so there was nothing to do but sleep once we finally got in and settled.

Friday, we woke up early, snagged our badges and did a once-over of the dealer’s room and the artists’ alley. We snagged a ton of business cards for post-con purchasing and had a great time seeing all the different merch available. I love going to smaller cons because the variety of stuff for sale is so much better than the usual handful that hit all the big ones. Once we’d done our wandering to scope things out, we went back to the room.

Since I’d been working on all of our new FE3H costumes, I hadn’t had time to do any repairs on our Leo Trio. We had some lunch and I sat down at the sewing machine to re-tack some of my embroidery on Leo, remake a missing piece of Odin and become a safety pin wizard for a few stubborn pieces that refused to stay put. Afterward, we suited up and went wandering around to find some fun.

We ended up killing a ton of time in the game room and I finally got back on the DDR machine successfully for the first time since surgery. I tried back at AnimeNEXT but it was fairly painful/exhausting. I got pretty ragged, but wasn’t totally wiped, so I call it a win! After Glitz played every rhythm game known to man, we wandered off to the Host Club to see what it was all about.

We had a great time talking to our host and hanging out over dinner, then we returned back to the room for the night to get undressed. I still needed to make Caspar’s tunic and do some final touches to allow us to wear our Black Eagles costumes, so I stayed up a bit to do that. Thankfully, I’d pre-drafted the patterns I’d need from some of my blocks, so it was quick and painless to knock out the tunic and hit the hay.

Drafted the collar on-the-fly with some scrap, but hey!

Saturday morning, I was back at the sewing machine after a quick fitting. I got the collar drafted and stitched in, and trim applied to the collar and hem. The armscyes got a quick fold-over hem just to keep the fabric from fraying. From there, it was all about quickly tacking things into place and using strategic safety pins to hold things in place that weren’t quite ready for a proper debut. Due to the velcro I’d grabbed having adhesive backing, many of the straps also needed to be pinned in place, as my machine’s needle kept getting totally gunked up and wouldn’t stitch properly.

WE DA BOYS WE DA BOYS WE DA BOYS

We were able to get dressed by early afternoon and we were all super pumped to finally be together in our new Black Eagles trio! The costumes weren’t ‘finished’ but they were more or less just what I’d planned to have ready for the con. I was pretty happy with how I’d scheduled their completion and kept my expectations appropriate during that time. I’m planning a bigger write-up about how I managed to avoid triggering my Project Despair, but suffice to say, I was super pleased that I pulled it off!

We rolled down to the con space and snagged a pizza for a late lunch. We met a ton of other cool FE3H kids (shout out to the gym squads, the Edelgard/Dimitri group and the Christmas Heroes/Halloween Pre-skip ensembles especially!) and set off to revisit the game room. I played even more DDR, this time with Skele, and Glitz played even more rhythm games.

We wandered around a bit after we left the game room and took some selfies around the hotel. We adventured out for some fast food dinner, then went back to the room to get undressed. Skele called it a night, but Glitz and I went out as casual Hubert and Ferdinand to waste even more time in the game room. We ended the night playing the extremely haunted Puyo Tetris cabinet and then turned in around 2AM.

Late-night Ferdibert vibes~

Sunday, we packed up, got dressed and spent the entire day waiting in line to visit the maid cafe. We were requested by one of the maids we’d met the night before at the bar and became fast friends. We loitered until after closing, since we’d gotten in so late, and then met up with Mithryanna who had volunteered to help us make the journey home in a single trip in exchange for sushi.

Good food with good friends after a good con!

We’re still catching up with everyone we met, so feel free to find us on our socials and say ‘hi’!

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