Let's do some MATH.

So on the guitar front, some research into the process of resin casting determined that to properly hollow-cast the guitar body with something that would be strong enough to lug around but light enough to carry would be about 200$ just for supplies. I could do that, but it's not an optimal use of a budget. The new plan we embarked yesterday was to take the guitar apart (apparently my mechanic friend has put together guitars before. Who knew? Super convenient.) and plan to hollow out the back to make it lighter. The idea's a bit spooky because it's using the original--fuck this up and we're SOL. But I trust them. It'll also be useful because the actual Italia guitar Haruhi uses is a hollow-body anyway, and they're interested in--if I get/make a stencil--recreating the weird S glyph thing on the guitar. That would be awesome!

I treasure having friends who actually get excited and want to help with my weird projects. I'd be lost without them.

With that in their hands and taken care of, it's clothing time. My plan today was to work out making buttonholes to slide the black ribbon through for the ruched part of the top....but I can't find the buttonhole foot. AWESOME.

Plan B was to test out my memory of how to gather fabric. Good news: EASY AS HELL!! Bad news: probably doesn't make enough volume for the skirt to ruffle right. It gets kinda sad at the bottom. That means circle skirts, and THAT means math.

Let's math, shall we?

There's 3 ruffle skirtlayers:
1 chiffon
1 short satin
1 long satin

At the widest point, my hips are now about 39" (BITCHIN~ Used to be 41, back when I first started checking!)

the chiffon layer should be at least 10" long
the short satin later should be at least 14" long
the long satin layer should be at least 27" long in the back

those are approximate lengths, usually about the length I think I want plus 2" of leeway for heming and just being wrong. I can always make them shorter, although that'll be a giant pain I admit.

The rule as I understand it for gathering fabric is that it requires approximately 3 times the normal amount of fabric for a task. That's going to be a lot of fabric. I actuallygot the black satin today, I found one with a bit of 2-way stretch (eek) that just felt lovely...soft shine and with a nice weight to it. Hopefully I'll still like it when this is all done. (stretch + slick? hahah, dumbass.)

here is the tutorial I'm using for making my circle skirt:
http://taeliac.deviantart.com/art/Tutorial-Circle-Skirts-90497598?offset=125
It has pictures, directions, and formulas. lovely.

I'm using the directions for a waist of 32" and up because this part of the skirt is going to basically start at my hips.

39" + 2"(ease) = 41" WAIST(for the purposes of the tutorial.)

so

X = WAIST/6.28
X =6.528 (which I will round to 6.5)

Oh but wait--I want this GATHERED. And that means it's actually 41" x 3 = 123"
X = 123/6.28
X = 19.585 (19.5 rounded) or 6.5 x 3, same thing.

Now, because of the gathering the skirt is MUCH too big for me to be able to just cut out normally. (Of course it is. Sigh.) So I gotta figure out how much fabric I need.....

4x skirt length + 4x X number + 18"

For the chiffon layer: (4 x 10) + (4 x 19.5) + 18 = 136" of fabric, or 3.77777 yards. So, 4 yards. Good to know.

For the short satin layer: (4 x 14) + (4 x 19.5) + 18 = 152" or 4.222 yards. The fabric I bought today had 4 and 5/8ths yards on it,so that's pretty much perfect. But it means this next calculation will HURT my pocket book something fierce...That fabric was on sale for 5.50/yard...there's more, but at 12.99/yard.

For the long satin layer: (4 x 27) + (4 x 19.5) + 18 = 204" or 5.6666 yards. Which means 6 yards for extra fudging. This is how I end up with loads of extra fabric, and I'm not sorry about it. I know the long satin layer is going to be much shorter in the front, but I don't know how much short yet and don't want to try and skimp or change the math. Math is NOT my strong point, so I have to work around that fact. And pay for it on occasion...like the 80$ that's going to go into just the long skirt layer. *wincing*

Next up will be making the belt and the arm things, I think, as I look for the button foot. And for a JoAnn coupon!!

~Raiphin

Breaking News: Guitar Update~!

So first off, two of my friends are the most awesome people in the world. Conveniently they date each other so I can see both at the same time. One, my best friend, has a theater degree and designs sets and helps with staging and stuff. Her boyfriend is a mechanic and skilled enough technically to be re-modelling their house by his lonesome. They have a shop in their garage that dreams are made of. My cosplay dreams, anyway.

I've enlisted the guy's aid in making the guitar more con-friendly--lighter, for the most part. He knows someone with a rotational resin-caster which just sounds sexy. My original intention was just to cast the body, but he's not sure the caster is big enough. If not, he'll help me with the process of making a silicon mold and the using fiberglass or plaster to make the body. Either way sounds pretty much awesomepants, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out~ (and what, no doubt, screws up.)

My goal now is to work on the costume itself as much as possible so as to be ready to spend time/money/effort when the call to arms comes for the guitar. Whee!

~Raiphin