This is my take on a Venetian Harlequin. The vest is modeled after Zoe's leather vest in Firefly, which I adore, but the costume is 100% original based on my drawings (I even made the shoe toppers!). [link] = My original sketch. [link] = More of the costume details.

Most of my costumes in the past have been fan-art or historical, but I was drawing a bunch of jesters and just decided one day that my drawings would be a far cooler costume than anything I could copy. I technically started this two years ago, but it was a such a fiasco that I put it away in a bag in the very back of my closet and didn't look at it once until this last month when the shame and frustration had worn off enough to try again. And good thing I waited, because the shame and frustration of *finishing* it almost did me in.

Difficulties:
* I can't sew. I mean, I do sew. I sew a lot. I've worn out several cheap sewing machines with all my sewing hours. It's the quality that
is lacking.
* The cloth was nearly impossible to find. Pale gray is really hard to come by. I tried dying white cloth to gray, but the dye was too dark and everything ended up multicolored and splotchy and I had to throw most of it out.
* The crinkle gauze that I used for the underclothes and the center trim was soooooooo hard to work with. I mean, I've used 4-way stretch velvet without the cursing that came from cutting and sewing that gauze. It changes size in hugely unpredictable ways depending on how it was dried and how much it's been handled. I had to wet it down every time I ironed seams! Argh. The lining is the only thing that's holding that stuff together.
* Cats love that transparent gauze. Just a warning. You cannot sew the stuff without a cat magically attaching itself to it, claws and all. I locked the door and it didn't keep them away.

Mistakes:
* I had to cut out most of the pieces twice because I did it wrong the first time. The back piece actually has a seam where it shouldn't because I cut it three times wrong and was out of fabric, so I had to piece remnants together.
* I made paper patterns for everything but the leggings (modified store pattern) but the end result was always too big so I had to dart it or resew it a bunch of times.
* But the hat ended up too small. And I was out of fabric by then, so I just had to cut the band and tie the ends together with some elastic.

Successes:
* The shoes turned out really nice. I think the duct tape in the paper pattern stage made a big difference. And the stars on the heel make me grin.

What I would have done differently:
* I think in retrospect that I should have got a simple black-and-white harlequin-patterned cotton and layered gray and white gauze over it. (Think the driving test outfit in Clueless). I actually felt a little bad that I didn't use any harlequin diamonds (I *love* that pattern). I figured at the time that the color-block style was already complex enough, given my limited skills.
* I should have done more hat research. What do people use to make jester hats stick up? Foam and wire? My stiff lining just didn't do the job.

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Finally, serious kisses to my S.O. and the cats. I'm so sorry I've ignored you the past month. And the S.O. was so sweet to say that I was handling my many setbacks well-! I guess that means that I'm not throwing as many things this year. Or at least not as many sharp things.