[Full disclosure, this cosplay is almost entirely made from new materials, I think only the elastic was 2nd hand.]

The inspiration to cosplay a character doesn't have to be deep. Sometimes you just want to be a teapot for Halloween.

I knew that I would not be going anywhere for Halloween in 2020, However an idea bubbled up in my mind…"Teapot cosplay" … I had to make it a reality. I decided to cosplay Polteageist from Pokemon Sword and Shield. Having spent months recovering from COVID (pre-vaccines), I REALLY needed that little splash of silliness and whimsy in my life.

I began by sketching out my idea. I wanted a trumpet skirt to be the silhouette of the flared bottom of the tea pot, and a floofy ruffled top to be the lid of the tea pot. My arms would be the spout and the handle, so I wanted detached sleeves for that. Since the Pokemon’s teapot is damaged, I wanted to add strategic cutouts around the skirt and make it look cracked and broken. The little ghost inside of Polteageist is two toned, the top half is purple and the bottom half is orange. I wanted to show this using my wig, starting with a purple base and attaching orange wefts as an extra long underlayer. I also wanted orange tights to wear under the skirt.

A friend of mine had just made the skirt I was interested in and pointed me towards a tutorial by a belly dance costumer, Mao Murakami [Link Here]. She also had a free tutorial for detached sleeves! I was not able to find a tutorial for the top, but had a general idea of how I could make it without too much trouble. After that I got to ordering supplies.

I like to buy my wigs for dancing in cosplay from Purple Plumb Wigs. I find they don't tangle as easily as some other brands. I had to look this next part up since it's been a few years, but I have the email receipt of the JoAnn's order I made. I couldn't exactly go to a store that year (2020 lock down era), but my JoAnn's had an order pickup line. You drive up next to the store once your order was ready, and at my location they kept it very no contact. I had to open my back passenger door for them to place the bags in my car. Then they shut the door and I had to hope that I purchased everything I needed. I was most worried about if I had ordered enough fabric. In that order I had 4 yards of shimmery white stretch velvet, two tubes of glow-in-the-dark fabric paint, and horsehair braid.

Then the crafting fugue began. The skirt tutorial was very easy to follow; however I ended up looking like I was working on some sort of ritual when my partner came to check on me! For the top I made a very basic pattern, just 2 rectangles.  I started with a mock-up using old bed sheets, (which were not stretchy, this THANKFULLY translated well to the stretchy velvet I used) The first rectangle is basically a tube top. The second rectangle was the ruffles and sleeves, I flipped over one edge to create a channel that I could thread elastic through. Before sewing the two rectangles together I painted the designs on the ruffle, as well as the skirt.

 I started by drawing the designs in pencil on the fabric, and once I liked the look of that I drew them in pen. For straight lines, I used painters tape to block off where I wanted the line and painted that in. Once it was dry I removed the tape. For the curved patterns, first I colored the thin loops with a washable marker, then I carefully painted in the lighter blue scallops with the glow-in-the-dark paint. While I had originally ordered one bottle of each color, I ended up needing almost 6 bottles of paint to cover everything! After that paint had dried, I went back over the loops with a blue sharpie. The final bit of painting I did was to paint one of the detached sleeves with the yellow paint. Upon hanging everything to dry I got a very cool view of how well the glow-in-the-dark paint worked!

 When connecting the ruffle to the top I first threaded the elastic, then I attached the ruffle to the front and back of the tube top. I left about 10in of ruffle not attached to the tube top so that I could have ruffled sleeves, When trying on the top for the first time I noticed that the sleeves needed more support, so I added elastic to the inside of the sleeve close to where they attach to the tube top. This kept the top from moving around too much when I raised my arms. To finish the skirt I added an asymmetric waistband with what was left of the velvet.

Next I turned my attention to the wig. It came curled so I started by straightening it with a steamer. This is one of my favorite ways to remove and add curls to synthetic wigs, especially if I'm not sure that they're heat safe. Once that was done, I started sewing in the orange wefts to the back underside of the wig.

After performing in this cosplay once, I realized that the fully painted arm was no longer particularly stretchy. The stiffened fabric left marks in my arm. Actually, none of the places I added paint stretched anymore! The pant seemed to add a latex-like layer on the fabric. Fortunately I was still able to fit into the skirt! It stretched just enough that I was able to wear it, and the un-painted waste band allowed it to not slide off of me, because the painted areas did not reduce back to their original un-stretched state. The upside of the paint is that it worked beautifully, like horsehair braid, and gave the ruffled top and bottom of the skirt a very nice flared look!

The final touch for this cosplay was ordering orange tights from Black Milk, and a very cute little Sinistea model to carry around while wearing and dancing in the cosplay.

It took until this past year, 2023, until I finally wore this cosplay to a con! I was kind of expecting to retire Polteageist after this, but it was surprisingly fun, and not too uncomfortable, to wear! I added gussets to the yellow detached sleeves and that made a big difference in my ability to wear it for more than a couple of hours. I think I will be bringing her to more cons in the future! Enjoy these spoopy pictures I took in a hotel restaurant, which I think is just perfect for this Pokémon <3