Bundle Up, It's Getting Chilly Out! [Attempting the Coat of Doom #1]

With every experiment there comes a time to create a hypothesis, and brainstorm. So the next part of my Alice cosplay is this "coat" of Alice's. First off, it is not a normal coat. It's going to take a lot of improvising, experimenting, and a lot of patience. It looks like it will be painstakingly hard to replicate, but I'm sure I can pull it off. It's just going to take a great deal of time compared to the other pieces of her costume.

Alice's coat looks rather poofy toward the bottom. Also her sleeve tops and ends are poofy as well.

I know that this coat cannot be made in just one piece because it would be awkward and impossible to slide on or pull over head. The first idea that popped into my mind was, "why not just install a long zipper down the back like a traditional prom dress?" Nope, I can't do that because a significant portion of the coat back is cut out. So because of both these problems I deduce that it will be made in two pieces, the top part above the belt on her chest, and the bottom part of the coat under the belt that "poofs" out. As for what mode of keeping the coat on, buttons are out of the picture. A zipper would work for the top part of the coat, and perhaps some sort of magnetic snaps to keep both pieces together better. These need to be concealed because in any picture of Alice her coat does not have buttons or visible zippers.

Her coat stands out on its own accord. It moves with her movement so I know it's not rigid.

So I want to also mention how the bottom half of Alice's coat poofs out. Old fashioned dresses back in the Victorian era used to poof out a lot. A material called boning helps dresses and corsets keep a specific shape. I never used boning before, but now that is going to change. I will install it on the inside of Alice's coat to keep it in the rounded shape that it is. I will also make the coat seem fluffy and realistic instead of flat, like it would appear if it were just two pieces of fabric together. So to make the coat more volumized I will also stuff tulle fabric inside the coat pieces. Tulle is a sort of mesh plastic that helps dresses keep their body, and is also sometimes used for dance and ballerina outfits (sort of like the material a tutu is made out of).

As for the rest of the coat: I will be using pink bias tape to line the edges of her coat, as well as work with more red vinyl like I did with the leg warmers. This will also be my first time working with an eyelet gun to make eyelets in her belts (top and bottom red belts for her coat). It doesn't look too hard to put in eyelets anyway. More details to come once I start working on the actual coat of doom!