[Advice] Materials to Get Started

Updated: Aug 21, 2021

How’s it going friends! Hnebadger here. Today I wanted to talk about what sort of materials you would need to get started. I’ll break it down into what I think you would “need” and then some additional “nice to have” upgrades. Links to all the products I mention here will be listed below. Let me help you break it down.

“Need” to have

Ok, so short disclaimer, you can definitely get started with less than what I’m about to tell you here. These are just my recommendations that are a good dollar-to-sanity ratio.

Sewing machine: even if you are going to do an armor set, there’s probably some cloth element somewhere on the costume itself. While you could hand-sew, there are plenty of affordable sewing machines out there. For example, I started out with a Brother sewing machine I bought from Walmart that cost me $200. It’s very affordable and honestly, I used that sewing machine for 12 of my 14 years I’ve been cosplaying. I only recently upgraded to my embroidery/sewing machine combo last year.

Sewing “notions”, your sewing machine will come with some basics like bobbins and a seam ripper, but you’ll also need thread for your costume, pins, fabric scissors, and fabric markers. There are a few different types, but to get started you just need a sharp pair of scissors that are used ONLY for fabric. Dull scissors won’t cut your fabric well and will make your life harder; trust me. Here is another pair of scissors I bought, called pinking shears, which help keep the fabric from completely unraveling but I wouldn’t consider these to be 100% necessary. For the marking tools, I use this disappearing ink marker from clover. The marks will disappear in about 3 days or sooner (depending on environment) and it works very well. For black fabrics I use either tailors chalk or just regular chalk if I’m careful. Depending on your costume, your pattern may also call for things like buttons, clasps, or zippers, these can all be found either online or at your local fabric store. I usually don’t stock pile those and just buy them as needed.
Iron: You need an iron to get rid of wrinkles and to press seams when sewing. Any iron with a steam function and multiple temperature settings should work, I posted one that I've used before down below.

Safety: If you are doing any sort of prop work with foam or other materials you will need some safety gear. Do not skip this! Your cool new sword is not worth a bunch of lung problems later in life! I use this 3M mask when I work with contact cement, sand my foam or when I’m painting. Don’t forget to change the filters every so often as well. When sanding, make sure to also get some cool safety glasses to protect your eyes from that piece of foam that wants to fly at mach 5 right into your eyeball.

Adhesives. I use primarily contact cement and hot glue. For the contact cement I use the ever popular barge, but when I lived in Japan it wasn’t available, so I found another alternative that worked for me. Now this stuff is TOXIC so make sure you wear your respirator and work in a well ventilated area. For the hot glue, I use a high temp hot glue gun. If you get just a regular hot glue gun you run the risk of your adhesive melting and nobody wants that. I occasionally use superglue, but 80% of the time it is barge and the other 29% is hot glue with only using super glue about 1% of the time.
Foam! There are a lot of different places to get foam, but since I’m based in the US, I get my foam from TNT Cosplay supply. They have different thicknesses available and so far I’ve been quite pleased with their shipping speed and their products.

Primer/Sealer. Again for foam props you will need something to prime your foam and to seal it. I use a heat gun to seal the foam before I prime it. Any heat gun should work, but this is the one I use which only cost me about $20. For the rest of my primer I use kwik seal to fill in my seams, plastidip to coat my foam before paint (usually 3 coats), then I paint my prop before sealing it with a spray clear coat. For paint, you can just use some cheap paint brushes and acrylic paint. If you want to see the amazing things you can do with acrylic paint, I suggest checking out Benni from Kamui Cosplay’s video on painting. He is much better than I am at painting and you can see you don’t need anything expensive.

Dremel. I love my dremel, ok well, my “craftsman rotary tool”. I’m putting this on the “need” list because it really helps with refining shapes for your props. I use the flexshaft attachment because it helps me keep much finer control of the tool.
Utility knife with extra blades. To cut your foam you need a sharp blade. Since I already had this box cutter, I just bought a bunch of extra blades and when one side gets dull, you can just flip it over. I’m not even halfway through this batch of blades and I’ve used it on two costumes already.
Cutting mat. If you are going to be cutting foam, the last thing I recommend on the “need” category is a cutting mat. This protects your work surface from scratches from your blade. You can get them in a ton of different sizes but I generally use my large one.

“Upgrades”

Ok so that was a lot of stuff, but it’s important to know that these things you can use for every costume going forward. All of the items I’ve mentioned above I have only had to buy once (except for the marking utensils). Now for some “upgrade options”. These are just some of the items that I have personally upgraded to, and there are certainly a bunch more items that I want, but don’t have the space for...looking at you bandsaw and belt sander!

Adjustable dress form. When I was starting out, I did the "duct tape" dummy technique. It was cheap and I could DIY it. However, this was one of the first upgrades I did and I highly recommend it. It allows you to put in your measurements and get a nice fit on your costumes. It kept its shape, unlike the duct tape dummy, and I could change the measurements after Thanksgiving after I ate too much!
Sewing clips: Earlier I said you “needed” pins to connect your fabric together and to keep your but I use these little clips to keep my fabric together when I sew, I just find them easier to use and I don’t accidentally stab myself with a pin.
Pattern weights: You could also get a some pattern weights, Most of the time, I just find something kind of heavy to lay my patterns flat, but you can also DIY your own set of pattern weights.
Ruler: There’s also this cool long clear ruler, you can use a regular ruler but I like that it has all these marking to help me if I need to add a seam allowance to a garment.
Pattern notcher. I don’t like clipping those tiny triangles that the pattern calls for, well with these I can just clip right through and it leaves this cool little notch for me to line up!
Serger. Another upgrade that I did last year was a dedicated serger. I got this one by brother, since it was in the right price range for what I needed. You don’t need this at all to finish your seams, but it did help me finish some of my seams faster.
Digital embroidery machine? I mentioned my digital embroidery machine already, but I chose to upgrade this since my next few costumes would need a lot of embroidery done. You can 100% embroider by hand, which I have done in the past. If money is tight, just know you don’t NEED this at all to produce a quality product. As with most of the things on this list, it just saves some time if you use them correctly.

Sewing table. Ok, full disclosure, I’m 30 and I honestly got this because as I’ve gotten older, sitting on the floor and cutting fabric just really started to hurt my back and knees. So last year I got this collapsible table to put my fabric on to cut. If I’m using a rotary blade to cut my fabric, then I have my cutting mat underneath and it has helped me immensely. But again, up until last year, I cut all of my fabric by sprawling it out on the floor and cutting it with a pair of scissors.

Alright, so there are some of my recommendations on some of the “needs” and “nice-to-haves” for cosplay. If you think I missed anything, leave a comment down below to help your fellow cosplayers out and I’ll see ya’ll later!

Links to all products mentioned here:

sewing machine: https://amzn.to/3fZGiiQ

pins: https://amzn.to/2Y7X0GS

fabric scissors: https://amzn.to/2Q8XWGF

fabric markers: https://amzn.to/3iKtQ8C

pinking shears: https://amzn.to/3iDCplo

tailor's chalk: https://amzn.to/3iIaCQU

utility knife: https://amzn.to/34ad3Ye

extra blades: https://amzn.to/2PRZcxE

self healing mat: https://amzn.to/3iHUBKK

dremel: https://amzn.to/3iChjUC

kwik seal plus: https://amzn.to/2YluSQL