The Minecraft release party, MineCon, was this year in Las Vegas. In a flash of inspiration, I knew I'd found my first cosplay opportunity. Most people would wear cardboard boxes, which isn't very Vegas. What Minecraft-themed costume would fit Vegas, aside from old people in sweatpants gambling their retirement checks away? A suit, of course! With a Notch-inspired Fedora, and Creeper-print fabric to tie it back to Minecraft. Hours of sewing later, I'm the proud owner of a Creeper shirt (and fedora.) Turns out there's a website that will print on fabric any image you upload to them, so I grabbed the Creeper texture straight out of the videogame, blew it up, and uploaded it to SpoonFlower.com (click for texture) -- there was a slight tiling issue in the version I printed, causing a white line to appear every few feet, but otherwise came out quite well! The fabric is somewhat expensive, but then again considering there's no minimum quantity I still consider Spoonflower a great deal. Plus, what's the alternative? Hand-painting fabric isn't my idea of a fun time.

The shirt pattern was based on existing shirt I had, tore apart, scanned using a large copier, and traced in Inkscape. Saved it into a DXF file format and used HeatSync's laser to cut the fabric. Finally, I uploaded the shirt design to YouMagine (click for DXF design files & instructions). I'm pretty sure it's the first free dress shirt pattern available online, especially in DXF format.

Finally, I sewed it using normal sewing machine techniques (see Thingiverse for sewing instructions.)

What can you make?