Last year, I bought red and gold fabric and red and gold face paint because I wanted to dress up as Iron Man for Halloween. Last Halloween. I've always liked Iron Man - someone who was more or less a normal human being-turned superhero. I suppose I'm also biased, considering Tony Stark went to MIT, and a product I helped design ended up being shown in Iron Man 3. (I will always show off about this. A product I designed is in a movie. A superhero movie. A movie about an engineer from MIT who becomes a superhero.)

I HAVE PROOF. The tablet the kid uses to charge up the suit is called the Vinci Tablet. I designed the handle. I'm cool. :P

That never happened. I got busy and never ended up making a dress in time... so I made it over the summer. I self-drafted and patterned a dress inspired by Iron Man's armor - so here's some pictures of the process.

I first came up with a sketch for the dress. I wanted it to be mostly red with some gold elements and, after looking at some inspiration on google, I decided to add pleats to mirror the armor plates on the actual armor. I kept the skirt simple mostly because I knew I was going to spend forever on the bodice.

This was the first sketch I made and worked off of! The skirt actually ended up not being a circle skirt - it was a rectangle that I box pleated at a few points.

I had to self-draft a pattern out of tissue paper because I didn't have any patterns premade to fit my body (and also because I'm too cheap to pay for patterns). I gave myself a lot of allowances on the sides because I know from prior experience that I have a tendency to make things too small.

And so, the fabric manipulating commenced.

I spent literally years pleating. Well, not literally, but like, at least a couple hours.

Here I have laid out some of my (janky made out of wrapping paper) pattern pieces onto my pleated fabric.

I totally forgot to photograph some steps, but here's the front of the bodice coming together!

And a close up of the side pleats.

The dress came together in a few nights, although I had some trouble with the zipper (I hate zippers but I hate buttons more, so I opted for a zipper) and because the pattern wasn't perfect, I had some weird fabric bunching around my sides. I decided it wasn't a huge deal to me - The dress was only going to be worn for Halloween anyway. The one thing that was a little sad for me was that the pleats, when pressed down, aren't super visible - I don't know if it would've worked out better if I had made them deeper.

Also, the skirt on the dress differs from the original sketch because I ended up opting for a box pleated skirt - I thought the pleats on the skirt would look more cohesive with the pleats on the bodice.

I also painted on the Iron Man crest on my chest. It's a little higher than where it's supposed to be (canonically), but whatever. It gets the point across.

I was originally planning to also paint my arm to look like the armor, but I decided it was going to be too hazardous since I was working in the library (hence the books behind me). I didn't want to chance getting red face paint everywhere. I opted for wearing my brass rat (which I wear all the time anyway) because Tony wears his.

All in all, it was a super fun project and it was my first time trying to pleat anything or self-draft something that was more complex than like, a t-shirt dress!

What do you think? Do you think I got the idea across? Also, did you dress up for halloween?