How it all began

Recently, my youngest daughter discovered the world of science fiction and fantasy festivals. She was very enthusiastic about the idea of cosplay – costume play, when you dress up as a favorite character from a TV series, movie or cartoon.

In order to encourage her, I said that I would also wear a costume to our first convention. Our first cosplay was bought from Aliexpress.

And my daughter saw that it was good. So she came to me and asks that I will make the Viking cosplay for next festival by myself.

At first, I thought "bummer"… I don’t have so much free time and prefer to save those rare minutes for crochet. Now I need to spend those moments for create the costume instead of crocheting.

And then I had a really brilliant idea.

I could CROCHET the whole costume!

And from that moment on it was only a pleasure.

The Viking cosplay - overall look

So, this is an overall look of my finished costume.

I've spent 2 month preparing it and, obviously, didn't finish on time.

The belt, for example, I've continued crochet to the last minute.

I was accepted into the cosplay competition on Icon 2019 fantasy and si-fi festival.

This was my first competition.

Unfortunately, only at the beginning of the show I realized that I had to prepare not only the costume, but the performance also.

Bad news for me, I can't improvise dance. Actually, I'm usually moving with a grace of clay brick...

I din't win anything in this competition, but a had a really great time.

My first cosplay ever

For the first time I've choose to cosplay not a person from movie or book, I decided to cosplay a period.

Steampunk. Great fashion: top hats, a lot of copper, cogwheels, goggles, leather, corsets, long skirts, petticoats and walking canes.

I've ordered all components of the costume from Aliexpress. The bustle I've sewed by myself.

We dressed up in our costumes and traveled with my daughter and some of her friends to a science fiction and fantasy festival "Olamot" in Tel Aviv. The event takes place every year on Passover holidays.

So…

I was a HUGE mistake!

First of all, don’t enter into Tel Aviv with a car! There are not parking spaces! At all! It took me like 40 minutes to find a place to park.

Second: high heels and corset for whole day – really bad idea!

By noon I had already removed the corset. Unfortunately, I did not prepare plan B and did not wear appropriate underwear. My gala décolleté became a décolleté who fought gravity (Spoiler: We didn't win).

But my daughter was having fun, so it was worth it