About three years ago, I got it into my head that I needed a Vault 101 jumpsuit. You see, by that time, I'd already put well over a hundred hours into Fallout 3, and it's still one of my favorite games of all time. Ever. Seriously.
If you don't know what in the hell I'm talking about, Fallout 3 is a video game released in 2008 by Bethesda Game Studios. It's an action role-playing style game set in the wasteland that was once Washington DC, 200 years after a nuclear war between the United States and China got a little ... out of hand. The main character starts the game in Vault 101, where (you believe) your family has lived for generations, safely tucked away from the mayhem on the surface. You soon find out that is not the case, however, and are forced to escape to the surface to search for your father and brave all sorts of dangers and moral conundrums.
Look it up on YouTube if you're interested. And you should be.
In any case ... I started making the jumpsuit for Halloween that year and never finished it. There was a lot of prop building involved, I didn't have the time or money to do the costume justice before Halloween, and (probably the more important factor) I didn't have anyplace cool to wear it. I lived in Kansas City at the time! There weren't any conventions closer than Chicago, and if i wore it out on the town on Halloween, I'd be answering the "What the hell are you supposed to be?" question all night. So I finished all of the sewing and put it in the closet.
Then, my friends, I moved to Seattle and that all changed. We've got Emerald City Comicon, GeekGirlCon, and (as far as I'm concerned) the Holy Grail of gaming conventions: Penny Arcade Expo. GeekGirlCon sort of crept up on me. I had to be reminded a few days ago that it was coming up this weekend. And I didn't get to go to PAX last year. I BARELY got a single day pass to go this year...
But I'll be damned if I don't go that one fateful day in my Vault 101 jumpsuit.
So, a few days ago, I pulled the ol' jumpsuit out of the closet, made a few adjustments, and now I've started working on it in earnest. I have three weeks to finish it for real. I've experimented with some options for sculpting props on a budget and collected almost all of the necessary materials. It's go time!
I'll leave you with the pictures I took when I first started putting the actual jumpsuit together. I've come a long way, but I still have quite a lot of work to do...
The front and back pieces, before sewing them together at the shoulder.
After sewing them at the shoulder, complete with zipper and flap!
Oooh, now it has sleeves and a collar (which I may or may not have totally improvised).
And here's what the whole thing looked like before I sewed the side seams together.
I'd done more work to it since I took these pictures, like added some elastic around the middle and sewed the numbers on the back and collar. Like I said, still have a lot of work to do. Wish me luck, and check back tomorrow for some pictures of my progress!
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