Cinder Fall — RWBY Volume 7
Two of my favorite things about RWBY are the character designs and the fact that it‘s stuffed silly with villains. Cinder Fall has always been a favorite, but her latest outfit for the Atlas arc really checked all my boxes: thigh high boots, monster hand, lots of details and accessories. I first started putting this together in 2020, and decided to pull it out and finally finish it for Momocon 2023.
Scribbling notes down on concept art is my favorite way to start breaking down big builds like this. Thinking out loud alongside the design is a great way to figure out seam lines, smaller details, and how I ultimately want to attach everything together.
Starting with the bodysuit, I pulled out Simplicity Kwik Sew 3052 from my stash to get me started instead of self drafting. This pattern features a center front and back seam, a collar, and sleeves, making it a solid block to work with. I shortened the legs into shorts, skipped the right sleeve entirely, and shortened the left sleeve to fit into the glove for Cinder’s monster arm. A full matching zip was placed in the back seam (which would be covered by the cape), and a slit for the gold decorative zip was sliced into the left side of the front. The gold zipper pull was glued into place to prevent any mishaps at the convention.
Trying to figure out all the gold details on the bodysuit, glove, cape, and belts had stumped me back in 2020. Traditional woven bias tape didn’t have the gold sheen I wanted, and gold faux leather was simply too thick and would heavily affect the flow and drape I wanted with the cape. Stretch gold pleather fit the bill, but I knew trying to keep all that stretch under control and without warping while machine sewing would drive me insane. So I settled on what felt the most logical to me at the time: hand painting all the gold details and trims. I’ve used and loved Angelus paints for years, and knew their paint and fabric medium would give me the final effect I was going for.
All details had to first start with two layers Angelus White mixed with their 2-Soft fabric medium to give the gold a good surface to pop off. After two layers of white, two layers of Angelus Pearlescent 18k Gold also mixed with 2-Soft were applied. The end result was gorgeous, didn’t affect the drape on the cape, and allowed for stretch around the glove and collar. Angelus never lets down!
To make Cinder’s glove and monster claws, I first started by making cheat gloves out of the same four way stretch spandex as the bodysuit. Instead of stitching the fingertips, I left them open and long. I bought a pack of extra long, full length acrylic nail tips off Amazon and matched them to my own nails to keep the claws proportional to my hand. The nails were then hot glued into the open fingertips of the gloves to keep them in place, and stitched together on my machine. (Hot tip: just hand sew these seams. There was way too much going on here for a machine and made the end result a little too messy.) Not the neatest work, but easily passes the five foot rule! The longer sleeve and opera length glove completely concealed my not-monster arm, so no prosthetic work or makeup for the con would be necessary.
The cape provided a unique challenge in its ability to be worn both snug over Cinder’s left shoulder, and pushed back and out of the way during battles, more like a superhero cape. In 2020, I desperately wanted a cape that could be worn both ways, but couldn’t quite nail the draping in a way that felt satisfying both ways. I ended up going for a straightforward cape across the back, partly for wearability, but mostly because I wanted to show off the paint job on my glove. I drafted out a rough idea onto paper of how I wanted it shaped, and altered a few muslins until I got a drape and front closure I liked.
The red lining of the cape present in the concept art didn’t make it into the final model, but I like the callback to Cinder’s original color scheme, so I picked up some blood red twill for lining. The lining and outer were sewn right sides together, then turned inside out and pressed for a particularly seamless look. All the gold trim was painted onto the outer fabric before sewing to help avoid any “oh shit that’s not where I wanted that” moments with the lining. After assembling, snaps were hand sewn onto the shoulders of both the bodysuit and cape to stop it from sliding back during wear.
The next biggest hurdle was Cinder’s thigh high, lace up high heel boots. Back in 2018, I made a full cosplay off an older piece of concept art for Blake Belladonna, including her own pair of thigh high, lace up high heel boots. I’ve been riding the high of pulling those off ever since, so I was ready to take on Cinder’s with my improved skills. I started with a full masking tape pattern off my leg wearing my base shoes (found at my local Ross) and mapping out of my seam lines. After cutting everything apart, my masking tape patterns were transferred to paper with a seam allowance. As I figured out with Blake, the tongue has to be sewn in place to keep it from immediately wandering away while walking, so each shoe was an outer piece, inner piece, tongue, and toe cap. I also made facings for the grommet plackets to tuck away raw edges and reinforce all the holes I was about to punch.
I bought a yard of black stretch pleather from Mood Fabrics for something else years ago, so I pulled that out for some thigh high “leather” boots for Cinder. I first painted the back of the heel black and the sole red with regular acrylic paint, and sealed with Angelus Finisher 600. Invisible zips were placed in the back seam toward the heel to increase ease of putting on/taking off. Once my paint was dry and my covers were sewn together, the covers were carefully pinned to the sole and superglued in place. After this, I had to punch out and hammer in 60 eyelets for across shoes. 1/4” black elastic laced up both shoes for both comfort and fit.
I logically knew that the best way to wear the shoes would be to attach them to a pair of dance tights to wear under my bodysuit — this would keep the shoes up all day and help the intricate cutout at the top of the tongue keep its shape. However, I was cutting it close to my convention deadline and thought I could take it a step further and directly sew my shoes to a nude powermesh I already had, which I would then sew directly onto my shorts. (It seemed like a great idea at the time…) While this did work well enough, it also came with a few issues, namely the powermesh not having enough structure on its own to fully support the shoes the way I wanted, and the fact that I could not take the shoes off to drive to the con, or give myself a break if necessary. Whenever I decide to rewear this, these shoes will definitely get removed from the shorts and powermesh, and properly sewn into a pair of dance tights, the way God intended.
At this point, all the major elements of Cinder’s look were finished and all that was left was accessories. I threw together her belts with heavyweight fusible interfacing and some leftover spandex. Faux buckles were cut out of 5mm craft foam and painted with the same Angelus 18k Gold. I threw together a quick hip pouch with more painted gold trim and interfaced spandex. (I’m a big believer in the con backpack, so this pouch was exclusively decorative.) Since my buckles weren’t functional, I sewed one end of the belts directly to the pouch, and used Velcro to attach the other end to the underside. Snaps were sewn onto the pouch and bodysuit to keep everything in place while walking. The same method was used to make the tiny upper arm pouch, which was sewn directly to a quick “wrapped” armband made out of some leftover cotton jersey. The gold cord around Cinder’s cape was found in the upholstery section of the fabric store, painted with more Angelus 18k Gold, and hand tacked into place around the shoulders of the cape.
For the brooch, I got Thea to 3D model and print the brooch using Polymaker PolyTerra PLA filament. We didn’t fully smooth out the print lines for sake of time, and instead just hit it with a few coats of Rustoleum filler primer before quick sanding and painting. I had ambitions for painting/dyeing craft feathers, but crunch meant I ended up making some craft foam feathers instead with some leftover 2mm craft foam at probably 4:30am one night. The feathers were glued directly onto the backside of the brooch, and the brooch attaches to the cape with Velcro.
The last big hurdle would be Cinder’s eyepatch, which covers up her own missing left eye. Unfortunately, I have two eyes, my left farsighted and my right nearsighted (an unfortunate reminder of my teenage droopy emo hairstyle) — so not only would I be down an eye, the one I would need to navigate a convention is the one covered up. To retain as much of my vision as possible, I drafted out a rough outline for my eyepatch onto paper and cut it out of 5mm craft foam. I then measured an inside outline, roughly 3/8” away from the edge, cut that out, and the whole thing was covered with some stretchy black scrap fabric. The fabric was stretched taut and hot glued in place, allowing me to see through while maintaining the effect. The hot glue didn’t hold up the best at the convention, and using superglue or contact cement on something that in-contact with my face feels unnecessarily risky, so I would probably use an old dull needle and machine sew the fabric to the foam directly. The bands holding the eyepatch in place are more 1/4” elastic, measured around my head so that they’re sturdy, but not uncomfortable. A cheap Amazon wig I bought back in 2020 was quickly styled to give Cinder her own droopy emo bangs, and Cosplanner informed me that I was finally 100% finished — an entire 12 hours before the con!
