Penelope Wilhern | 2018

Penelope Wilhern | Penelope

Made for : Auckland Armageddon Expo 2018

Background : When Christina Ricci was announced as a guest for that years Armageddon Expo, I immediately knew I wanted to cosplay one of her characters to meet her. I also wanted to be one of her more obscure characters because I was sure everyone would be doing Wednesday Addams (I was right). I narrowed it down to three, Kat from Casper, Katrina from Sleepy Hollow and Penelope.

I ruled out Kat first as I didn’t think it would translate without Casper and I didn’t have the know-how to make him how I wanted. Katrina was ruled out next as my friend Hannah (cosplay cyanide) was making her and I didn’t feel like doubling up so I settled for Penelope. A full winter garb for a warm spring convention. What could possibly go wrong?

Things used :

Wig : As this costume was sort of a last minute decision, as in I only decided to make it when Christina Ricci was announced as a guest for Armageddon that year, I didn’t have the time to order a decent lacefront brown wig from overseas. So I posted in the local cosplay buy and sell groups if anyone had one for sale but I got crickets as a response. That lead me to ferreting through my own wig hoard to see if I had anything suitable. I found a pure white wig which I had brought for a planned Babydoll remake and decided the best course of action would be to get some synthetic fabric dye and dye the whole thing brown. To my immense surprise, it actually worked quite well!

Nose : It would have been so much easier if I had just brought a snout prosthetic but I really thought that making it would be a better idea. I took a cast of my own nose using play-doh and plaster which worked a lot better than I had anticipated. Using the plaster mold, I sculpted a snout using plasticine and cast that with plaster to make a mother mold and then cast the final version in gelatin. The gelatin snout was glued to my face using pros-aid and I covered it in foundation to match my face.

All that effort and I never really took the scarf down on the day.

Scarf : Commissioned from Meld Maker

Coat : For the most part, I used McCall’s M7373 mostly unaltered. The parts I did change were the sleeves ( I added a slash at the wrists and long dagger points), and the collar (also adding dagger points).

I chose to make the coat from drill rather than wool purely because of the time of year the convention was being held at. I was already going to be wearing a pure woolen scarf over my nose all day, I didn’t want to then have a full length woolen coat to add to it and risk overheating on the day. So I went with drill and a lawn lining. Nice and light-weight.

I do wish I had known about cutting the red strips on the bias and how that would have stopped them from fraying. If I ever remake this again in the future,. that is something I will definitely look at doing.

Gloves, Stockings and Shoes : The stockings were a skin coloured pair that I dyed dark green. The gloves were a vintage pair that I brought second hand and painted green using fabric paints. The shoes were from my own wardrobe.