The jumpsuit has been my biggest point of progress. It's totally finished -- painted, lined, and completely ready to go. In this pic, it still needs its outlining around the diamonds, but it's almost done. That process alone took 3-4 days.
The shawl is so close to being done I can taste it. The hood is finished and attached, and the leg wraps are just perfect. It still needs its final edging to match Tali's, but the designs are done and it's almost ready to go!
Despite all the progress -- the belt is complete, the gun is painted and glazed, the shoes are sprayed and ready to wear -- so, so many things have gone wrong. Like the faceplate. It's supposed to be this beautiful, dark purple that obscures the face but remains transparent. As you can imagine, this isn't easy to achieve; I tried four different methods before I finally got one to work.
This is the mask I'm using. Shape and flexibility-wise, it's perfect; I cut a notch out of the underside with a dremel and used a heat gun to bend it into the right shape. In no time at all, that part, at least, was finished. But the coloring was the bitch.
First: I coated the plastic with headlight vinyl, a method I'd read about online that seemed to meet with great success. The results, while a pale purple, looked so poor I didn't even bother to take a picture. Second I tried coloring the plastic by hand with a purple Sharpie, another method people had tried online. That worked, definitely, but I was left with a mask marred by horizontal lines every 4 millimeters down the whole length. Not exactly attractive -- again, not worth a photo.
Then, getting desperate, I figured out that you could effectively dye plastic using RIT fabric dye and really hot water. A lot of people online have boasted of their success with this method, so I gave it a shot. It worked really well with an old pair of safety glasses I had around the house, so I set up shop in my kitchen and gave it a whirl with the faceplate.
This is my kitchen, the faceplate happily simmering away on the stove like some sort of demented stew and old operating room towels (my mom got them from the hospital where she works) on everything to prevent my countertops from taking on the same purple hue as the mask.
I'm not saying that method worked really well -- much of my stove was purple by the time I was done, and I had to hang a towel from the vent to make sure I didn't also stain my walls that color. But hey, with some Comet and a lot of scrubbing, it came off. Oh well!
If only my results with the mask had been as beautiful as the mess I made in the kitchen.
After more than 5 hours bubbling away on the stove, this pale, sad result was what I got.
Finally, four days ago, I had given up. Tali was going to have a clear faceplate and that was that; there was nothing else I could do. Then my husband happened to look at my office, strewn with fabric and elastic bands and paint, and said, "Why don't you just use purple fabric?"
And it worked perfectly. A simple, sheer fabric from Joann's and the mask was done. Here, the edges aren't trimmed yet, but it's all glued and ready to go. And all it took was an easy week of my life spent fighting with that stupid plastic.
Now, there are mostly just details left. The list above isn't totally updated: the arm plating is finished as of this morning, and the shoulder armor is pinned and waiting to be sewn. I'm only typing here as a short break before I head back to gluing on the faceplate; the patterns for the pieces are upstairs and clipped to the mask, just waiting for me to finish it.
It's progress. Last week, I'd have said I wasn't sure if I could get it done in time. Today, I'm feeling like I'm almost there.
Six days!
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