We Make Costumes, Not Excuses: A blog about how we make costumes and why we aren’t afraid to try new ideas.

There are many great costume blogs out there with all kinds of tutorials on how to construct costumes. You can find them by searching for keywords like “Cosplay” or “How To Make a Costume”. But you won’t find many blogs that talk about what it’s like to work at a costume shop with a team of other costumers who are constantly pushing the envelope. This is our story.

We have been in business as Mulan Costumes since 2008 and have been making costumes together since 2001. In those years, we’ve produced thousands of custom costumes and have worked on hundreds of shows, events and film productions. We’ve learned so much along the way – not just about costume construction – but also about business, communication and life in general.

We Make Costumes, Not Excuses

A blog about how we make costumes and why we aren’t afraid to try new ideas.

If you are interested in having us make a costume for you, please visit our Facebook page.

We have been cosplaying together since 2009 and have made over 100 costumes as a couple. We are known for our elaborate pieces that often have lights, moving parts, and/or electronics integrated into them. We’ve been interviewed by the Today Show and featured on MTV.com and Kotaku.com (among many others), but one of the most flattering things we’ve heard is that we’re a cosplay power couple.

Our work has been shown at multiple conventions across the country including Dragon*Con and San Diego Comic Con, with articles about it appearing in Cosplayzine Magazine, OTAKU USA Magazine, Refashionista Magazine, Wired GeekMom and more. We also had an article published in The Cosplay Journal about making a moving mechanical costume.

Halloween is over, so are the convention seasons for many of us, and we’re already starting to think about next year. Many of you have asked about our Mulan costume and how we made it. So for today, here’s a detailed post about the process!

First, a few disclaimers:

1) We’re not professional costumers. We have no formal training or experience in costume construction. We’re just two friends who like to make cool things together. And who like to do our own thing, even if it makes us look crazy!

2) We actually don’t know what we’re doing most of the time. In fact, sometimes we even forget the name of some basic sewing equipment (seriously). But our ignorance doesn’t stop us from trying new things! If you want to learn more about us and why we make costumes, read “Why Don’t You Just Go To Party City?”

We are cosplay/costume makers and have been for a substantial amount of time. Though we are both individuals, we are constantly working together to make the best costumes we can, both for ourselves and for other people. We want to show that even if you don’t have tons of experience or skills, you can create something you’re proud of.

We are always working on our own projects and making them as quickly as we can so that we can show off the things we’ve learned along the way. We also do research and try to find out what works and what doesn’t in order to help others not make the same mistakes that we’ve made. Some of us (the smart one) has degrees in fashion design and some of us (the artistic one) has degrees in illustration; this gives us a variety of skills that overlap well with cosplay/costume making. As such, you will see a wide array of tutorials here on our website about how we make our costumes, many focusing on more technical aspects than just sewing or sculpting.

Our goal is to promote the craft of costuming and inspire other cosplayers to take on new challenges, by sharing our knowledge and experience, but also by showing how we learn from our mistakes.

We are not professional seamstresses, but we are experienced cosplayers and costume makers. We have been making costumes for ourselves and others since 2009, and have won numerous awards at various cosplay conventions, including the Nordic Cosplay Championship in 2012.

We’ve learned a lot along the way, but we’re still just hobbyists – cosplaying fans like you! But if we can do it, so can you!

Cosplay is not a competition – it’s a celebration of pop culture. Our mission is to help make your cosplay dreams come true!

In October of last year, my daughter decided she wanted to be Mulan for Halloween. I was a bit surprised by this choice, as she has no interest in any of the Disney princesses. She has never shown any interest in wearing a costume that would even remotely resemble that of a princess.

We had just come back from visiting our friends in New Mexico. They have a little girl who is also in love with Mulan. My friend had made a costume for her daughter, and my daughter wanted one too.

I am lucky enough to have friends who are talented seamstresses and costumers, but I am not one of them. I can sew well enough to repair my clothing and make simple things like curtains and pillows, but I do not know how to draft patterns or make fitted garments without them. (I’m sure if I tried hard enough, I could learn those skills, but for now there is no time.) So when my daughter asked me to make a Mulan costume for her, I knew it would be more than I could handle on my own. But she really wanted it and was very insistent about it being handmade by mommy — she said it wouldn’t feel like a real costume otherwise! So we decided to try

When my husband and I decided to cosplay as Jack and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas, we had no idea what we were getting into. Cosplaying, for those of you who don’t know, is a combination of the words costume and play that refers to dressing up as a character from a movie or book. Our friends convinced us to do it, and after months of work (and no small amount of procrastination), we finally finished our costumes just in time for FanX 2014 in Salt Lake City.

What I didn’t know when I started this project was that there were hundreds of different techniques to build costumes. The possibilities are endless, and there are so many online tutorials that it can be overwhelming to know where to start. So here is my advice: find something you like, research how other people have made it, and get started!