River Tam Vest Cosplay | Crocheted Commission
When a friend of mine commissioned me to make her a River Tam vest for her Dragon*Con cosplay, I was really excited because 1) I love the show “Firefly,” and 2) I’d never crocheted a costume piece before! I was also nervous for that same reason.
Thankfully, other yarn-crafting cosplayers have paved the way for me, and I found a wonderful, widely used pattern originating at the Dragon Crafter blog, which includes links to some other blogs that have fleshed out the finishing phase. I ended up finishing it using Rogue Bibliophile’s rundown (the site is weird and doesn’t link directly. If you have a problem, just hunt for “River Tam” in the search bar). Looking at the pictures helped as well!
I’ll be honest, the notation on the main and linked blogs was little hard to follow at first, but after a lot of frogging, I figured it out!
I followed the patterns, though I was striving to make the vest a few sizes smaller than the directions laid out. Another crochet blogger acknowledged the large pattern size, and suggested working with a smaller hook. So I ended up using a size 0 hook to tackle a whole skein of One Pound off-white yarn. (The link to the yarn they used isn’t available on KnitPicks anymore anyway.)
This resulted in nice, tight stitches, and when I tested it on another friend of similar thin build to my commissioner friend, it seemed to be an ideal size! But when I added the edging and the fishnet parts (using less stitches than the pattern at Rogue Bibliophile dictated, to make it smaller), suddenly the vest could fit me, and was even a little loose in the back.
I’m hoping that washing it in cold water will shrink it! I’ll be delivering the vest to my friend at Dragon*Con, so I’ll let you know!
But I still love the way this looks, and I look forward to making one for myself!
—————— AFTER DRAGON*CON ——————
My friend loved the vest! Unfortunately, it was too big for her, so I’m gonna make her a smaller one 😛
—————— AUGUST 2017 ——————
AT LONG, LONG LAST, I’ve started making my friend a smaller version of her vest. I’m using the same pattern with Lion Brand Baby Soft White fingering yarn, with a 2.5mm hook. I’ll post pictures when I’m done!
—————— NOVEMBER 2017 ——————
I’M DONE! I’ll be mailing it out to my friend next week! It should be decently smaller, so hopefully will fit her better!
—LATER—
Thankfully it DOES fit better, but it’s still not perfect. Unfortunately, to my talent level it would have been a monster to modify the pattern at all…and would have cost a lot more. But I think both sides are satisfied as much as we can be! I can officially say that this WIP is CLOSED.
