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Let’s Talk Pattern Drafting – Sleeves (Part 2)

I have a good excuse for missing last week’s post! I had surgery on Monday! While I could’ve probably pushed myself to get something out on Tuesday, I prioritized my health (for once!) and rested up instead. Now it’s… the following Thursday. Happy Tutorial Thursday, y’all!

So, I trust that everyone went out and made their basic blocks last week, because we’ll actually be needing them this week for our sleeve drafting! If you haven’t, mosey on over to part 1 in this series and get that pattern ready!

Now, sleeves are the bane of most people’s existence when it comes to sewing, much less drafting a pattern. Being able to make a good sleeve is a skill that you will never regret honing, so we’ll start with a basic sleeve block, talk about how to adjust some weirdness in the fit that may arise when you attempt to put it on the basic block and discuss a few neat adjustments you can make to get different shapes in your sleeves.

But first!

Let’s Make A Basic Sleeve

Making Of: Erhardt (Part 1)

When Octopath Traveler came out, I was beyond excited to dive into it and really see what it had to offer. With 8 main characters, it seemed tailor-made for our usual group plus a few of our usual add-on members, but I ended up struggling to figure out which character best suited me and that I liked. Glitz was a shoe-in for Cyrus but despite my appreciation of Therion, I realized halfway into making him that I just… wouldn’t look good. I wouldn’t look decent. It was going to be a hot mess, and it wouldn’t be fun for me as a result.

OPT was really fun and had a lot of really beautiful character designs, so it wasn’t hard to find secondary characters that appealed to me. I initially fell in love with Captain Leon, but alas! There’s no actual art of him, only his overworld sprite. That, coupled with the lack of a confirmed Tressa for our group, left me with the understanding that I would be the ‘can you move so I can get a picture of the Octopaths?’ guy if I were to commit to him.

My second choice went to Erhardt who had a lovely battle sprite and some concept art to base my costume decisions on. His outfit was also a pallette swap of Olberic’s default costume, so any further details I would be able to glean from the more detailed and varied artwork available for him.

Image result for erhardt octopath — His hair is for aesthetics, not practicality!

The problem arose again: would anyone recognize me without an Olberic for context? Thankfully, after making Alfyn, Type09 decided that he wanted to do the Warmaster variant of Olberic, so I set out to finally make my own Octopath costume!

Making Of: Buster Sword (Part 1)

Ah, do you hear that? It’s an excuse to make an iconic piece of video game history without actually wanting to cosplay the character myself. Don’t mind if I do!

The commission for Cloud’s armor and the Buster Sword came through and I absolutely could not wait to get started. He wanted them to be durable so that he didn’t have worry about about them getting damaged during wear, so I decided to go with a foam core and thermoplastic shell. Since the Buster Sword was going to be the biggest user of materials and had relatively few fussy, rounded pieces, we decided to go with Wonderflex. It’s about half as expensive as Worbla but works best with flat pieces.

Here’s a step-by-step follow-along on how to proportion this oversized toothpick properly!

Continue reading “Making Of: Buster Sword (Part 1)”