Where are you from originally or reside currently: DC/Metro region

How long you have been cosplaying: A little over a year

Other Characters cosplayed: Belle (Once Upon a Time), Katniss Everdeen (Hunger Games), Margaery Tyrell (Game of Thrones), and more to come!

I’ve always had a love for costuming, especially in the fantasy genre.  There is often so much symbolism about who the characters are and their backstories that is represented in their costume design.  I also have a fascination with raw materials and being able to take the bare basic components and seeing what I could make from them.  I first heard about Ring Con and Dragon Con when I was in college, but being a full-time student while juggling two part-time jobs left me with very little time to make anything, let alone attend the conventions.

After finishing grad school, I tried my hand at historical costuming after a friend invited me to a Jane Austen ball.  Not wanting to invest in a commercial pattern for what I thought was going to be a one-time project, I decided to research costume construction by looking at museum collections instead.  This led me to study and recreate clothing from other eras, and before I knew it, I was able to sew garments ranging from 18th century Marie Antoinettesque dresses to Civil War era ball gowns.  The research involved with all of this also helped me develop my skills at pattern drafting and fabric manipulation techniques, which helped IMMENSELY when it came to making my future cosplays.

It wasn’t until last year, when a friend of mine invited me to go to Awesome Con with her, that I made my first cosplay outfit: Belle’s village dress from Once Upon A Time (a frantic four day costume project).  It was my first convention, and being able to hang out with fellow geeks and fans in their amazing cosplays was an awesome experience in itself.  I was hooked from then on.

I’m a materials science engineer by day and a chemistry instructor by night.  When I have the time, I also like to spend my summers mentoring students from local high schools and colleges in the research lab.  Keeping students engaged and interested in STEM fields is something I am passionate about, so much so that I am currently pursuing a second masters degree in education.  Cosplaying and historical costuming are my hobbies, and both activities are constantly leading me to learn new skills such as embroidery, bead work, corsetry, and sculpting.

When I am not making costumes for myself, I help make costumes for local cosplayers, something that I’ve always enjoyed doing.  As long as I receive a heads up within a reasonable amount of time, I’m always happy to help someone out with their costumes.  I’m also a member of my university’s Needleworks group, and we also participate in a lot of community service projects.  One such project that I’m working on right now is a crocheted blanket for a Wounded Warriors event taking place on campus later this month.  When I’m not at work, in the classroom, or behind the sewing machine, I also like playing video games, photography, drawing, baking, exercising, or simply chilling out to good food and movies with friends.

I like to approach my cosplays with a “go big or go home” mentality and tend to take on the biggest and/or most complicated outfit worn by my favorite characters.  Katniss’s wedding dress from Catching Fire and Margaery’s Purple Wedding dress are my two most challenging yet much loved costumes to date.  Being new cosplayer with a limited budget also drives me to making the most out of the materials I can afford to buy and making do with what I already have on hand.

The Katniss dress took MONTHS to complete, and in the end, I had to take a step or two back and go ahead with a simpler vision of the dress, which still involved a HUGE organza skirt with hundreds of yards of hand-pleated tulle ruffles and ribbon, a feathered bodice, and the cage made out of craft foam and decorated with 1000+ rhinestones.  The Margaery dress was a different beast entirely.  What started out as a simple and straightforward dressmaking plan ended up expanding at an alarming rate as I noticed more and more of the details in the high res images I’ve googled up of the dress.  The amount of detail work that I had to incorporate by hand was INSANE, but the end result was amazing.

Both dresses were made by me and well received at the conventions I debuted them at.  It’s always an awesome feeling when convention attendees approach you for a picture or ask you about your costume, because in that moment, you know that all of your hard work has paid off.  There is also that feeling of satisfaction that not only were you able to make something beautiful out of what began as simple pieces of cloth, ribbons, and foam, but you went and pushed yourself to accomplish what you had initially thought to be an impossible undertaking.

Cosplay who you want to cosplay!  It’s all about showing your love for a character from a fandom that you enjoy, and there are absolutely no limitations.  Sure, there may be some negativity from time to time, but that exists in every aspect of life.  At the end of the day, the supportive, positive people far outnumber the bad apples, so get your cosplay out there and have fun!

Be nice and courteous to each other.  Not everyone is going to look like a model or have the time and resources to make their own costumes.  At the end of the day, everyone is there to have fun and pay tribute to the fandoms that they love, so appreciate all the time, money, and thought that went into their costumes.