To be brutally honest, I’ve done very little in the way of crafting recently – I’ve been indulging my history geek side and spending a week in Athens. Much sun, lots of good food and one brand new textbook later and I’m back in the inevitable UK autumn. I did a little bit of work on a shawl I’m making for someone for Christmas, but it’s not geek worthy.

So it’s a lazy weekend with my girls – spent yesterday trying to get my eldest caught up with Walking Dead – she’s a season behind and it’s getting harder not to accidentally spoil it for her. We got through a good few episodes before she decided to switch to Battlefront on the xbone (which she’s MUCH better at than me – she can actually kill targets, whereas I end up with stats like “0 kills, 22 deaths”) and today she’s on Mirror’s Edge (again, she’s better than me with her ability to … you know … actually play it). I’m glad nurture has dictated that she and her sisters have inherited some of our nerdiness. All three sisters are into cosplaying and it’s a passion I love sharing with them – not just wearing, but teaching them how to create their own.

I think one of my favourites has to be the Silk Spectre outfit I made for my eldest. Originally it was part of a duo, with me as the Comedian (I’ll showcase that in another blog), but we’ve yet to wear both outfits together in the same place! It was a surprisingly simple one to design, as well as cheap as I used slipper satin which is roughly £4 a metre.

The most important part of making these for me is the ability to shed elements of the costume in order to do practical things like eat and pee. Or to be able to strip the majority of it off in order to cool down – voice of experience speaking here -wearing fake fur in July at London Comic Con taught me a valuable lesson. With that in mind, I made the gusset fasten with press-studs, the main torso had a functioning zip down the front and the gloves and leg sections were attached with pieces of a butchered suspender belt.

After making this I swore I’d never make gloves from scratch again (fail), especially with slipper satin! I equally blessed and cursed my overlocker throughout – whilst it makes sure the edges don’t fray, it also has a tendency to eat slippery fabric. Conclusion; gloves are a pain in the butt! However, the finished product was absolutely worth it. I also cut and stuck a belt together, using foam boards and sprayed the lot silver – simple press-stud fastening was all it took to secure that – dead easy.

Add one beautiful and confident girl and ta-dah! She took to the stage at several cons in this and even won £10 at one of them, which she offered to me since I did all the work. How absolutely adorable? But I do these kind of things because I love them (most of the time) – my reward is seeing my creations enjoyed by others, so she kept the money and bought herself something nerdy with it. Seeing my girls grow and thrive is a never-ending joy – they are my superheroes.