Heather Build Log

Here's my Build Log for Heather Mason from Silent Hill 3. This cosplay was a fast build, and so this will be a shorter post of the process, as there's not as many parts to describe for me as with some other projects.

My general idea for Heather was to mostly thrift all of the pieces for her costume, as she wears "normal clothes" - however this proved basically impossible for her white vest so that's one part I had to make entirely from scratch. Most of the other pieces for her are modified thrifted garments!

For the vest, I started with buying a pattern for a garment with a similar look as what I wanted for the end result. I then started creating my mock-ups and altering it to be accurate to the reference.

Once I was happy with the base, I moved on to my proper white fabric in some kind of raincoat synthetic material.

I also made a lining using the same pattern, and matched it to the outer fabric.

When the lining was added, I made sure it would stay put and not slip around or become baggy through stitching in between the straight stitches of all the pieces, so that it's not visible but still fixed in position.

After the lining was added, I inserted a thin batting into the pieces prior to closing all the edges of the outer and lining. I also added the reinforced strips on the seams that had such in the reference.

With all of that done, the final piece to add was the hood, pockets and zipper in front. After having attached those details, I went in with some acrylic paint and weathered all of the seams to give it a rougher dirtier texture.

With all that done, the vest was complete!

Next we have the skirt, where I bought one secondhand that was close enough to what I wanted. I cut the length and dyed it in a more vibrant dark green.

Mmmm forbidden soup....

The orange sleevless turtleneck shirt was also quite simple, I found a shirt in orange and altered it to the proper model.

Here it's slightly visible where I've drawn the "new" shirt, I stitched this on my overlock machine and used the fabric remnants to create the turtleneck neckline. In order to keep it tight when worn, I added snap buttons in the neck so I could have it tight but not have to thing too much about how stretchy the neckline itself had to be in order for me to even be able to pull it over my head.

The wig is the final thing of the wearable parts of the costume that I did any work with. I started out with a blonde base wig from coscraft.co.uk (not sponsored).

This wig was quite fluffy as-is, so it served as a good base for the final style.

I then went section by section dying the roots of the wig with promarkers to get the proper gradient of the hair. I did this before trimming or styling.

To achieve the final styling I trimmed the wig and used a very slim curling iron to get the slightly wavy texture of her hair, as well as fixing the whole style with got2b glued hairspray.

The final two parts to Heather was the pocket flashlight, and steel pipe.

For the steel pipe I used plastic plumbing pipes that had a close-enough appearance to the pipe (albeit in a wider diameter than the pipe but that's fine).

I used a coarse grit sandpaper and sanded the pipe-section as well as the bend, in order to add some extra grip for the paint to stick to the piece.

I then painted the whole thing in Anchor Steel acrylic paint from cosplayshop.be (not sponsored) and added the rough rust in various browns and reds with a coarse sponge.

For the flashlight I worked with a battery compartment for a 9V battery with an integrated on/off switch, built a cover around it and attached the "cup" made in black worbla.

I used a single LED light soldered directly on the wires that came with the battery compartment, and painted the whole thing.

And that's pretty much it! A short and sweet build of an iconic horror girlie!