The Southwest Costumers Guild is a loose and informal educational society of persons interested in all facets of historical, cultural, science fiction, fantasy, and humor costume and cosplay. Members are often seen on stage and behind the scenes at Science Fiction Convention masquerades, historical reenactment events, street fairs and theatre. SWCG is central Arizona's chapter of the International Costume Guild.

Our Website is now hosted by Costume.org!

Please note that info@southwestcostumersguild.org and our other former "southwestcostumersguild.org" e-mail addresses are not currently active.
Please contact us via our new e-mail:  southwestcostumers@gmail.com.

Index
Newsletter
Costumers Calendar
SWCG Activities
Meet the Guildsters - Mail Links and links to Member Web Pages
Links - Web Sites of Interest to the Costumer
Hints and other "How To" Articles

Randwulf's Smartphone Pouch - Free sewing pattern from SWCG VP Randall
 
Join the Southwest Costumers Guild

Recruiting and PR Materials:
"Renaissance Faire" Foldover Flyer
(Featuring a practical belt pouch pattern)
Quarter-Page Flyer
Bookmark

SWCG Bylaws

 
SWCG members receive our newsletter, "Cactus Needles" by e-mail.
A few weeks after its initial publication, we post Cactus Needles to this website for all to enjoy.

Current Issue -  November 2024
Back Issues (All the way back to the Cactus Needles premiere in 1994)



Cactus Needles is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please print the newsletter and give it to your friends, but print the entire newsletter and don't make any changes or charge any money. Go to www.creativecommons.org to view the license. Individual articles and pictures belong to their authors. If you'd like to reprint an individual article or picture, please e-mail southwestcostumers@gmail.com for appropriate permission.

December 7, 2024, 12-5 PM - LibCon West at the Glendale Public Library main branch, 5959 West Brown Street, Glendale AZ  West side 59th Avenue (halfway between Olive Avenue and Peoria Avenue). It's a lively free pop culture event with merchants, meet & greet booths, food trucks and lots of cosplay. https://www.libconwest.org/

December 7, 2024 - Meet SWCG at Libcon West!*  SWCG will have a meet and greet booth (outdoors weather permitting) at LibCon West at Glendale Public Library main branch, 5959 West Brown Street, Glendale AZ. Stop by and say hello!  Setup begins at 10 AM. The event opens to the public at noon.

January 24-26, 2025 - Taiyou Con at Mesa Convention Center, Mesa, AZ. https://taiyoucon.com/

January 25, 2025 - Tempe FanCon at Tempe Public Library, SWC Rural Road & Southern Avenue. "Comic and cosplay fans grab your capes and superpowers and come to the Tempe Public Library for a celebration of comics and pop culture. Join us for free family fun including costume contests, authors and artists, entertainment, activities for the kids, photo ops with characters, fandom related items for sale, and food trucks."  https://www.tempepubliclibrary.org/event-calendar/tempe-fancon

January 25, 2025 - Meet SWCG at Tempe FanCon*  We'll have a meet and greet table at Tempe FanCon. Stop by and say hello.

February 15, 2025 1PM - Lunch*  Meet us at New Hong Kong restaurant, 2328 East Indian School Road in Phoenix, for conversation over food.

February 24-March 2, 2025 - End of Trail at Arizona Game & Fish Ben Avery Shooting Facility. The Single-Action Shooting Society's annual tournament of cowboy action shooting.The event features a sutler's row of merchants for filling out your wild west/victorian/steampunk costume. https://endoftrail.org/

March 7-9, 2025 - Kikori Con  at Little America Hotels, 2515 E. Butler Avenue, Flagstaff AZ https://www.kikoricon.com/

March 15-16, 2025 - Tucson Festival of Books on the University of Arizona Mall. https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/

March 20-23, 2025 - Wild Wild West Steampunk Convention at Casino del Sol, Tucson, Arizona. https://www.wildwestcon.com/

March 22, 2025 - Photo Shoot* and Personal Projects at Tasha's place. Bring a favorite costume and/or a camera. Tasha's yard has a variety of interesting backgrounds. E-mail the Webmaster for directions. southwestcostumers@gmail.com

April 4-5, 2025 - Arizona Fan Fest in Safford, Arizona. https://gilavalleycentral.net/arizona-fan-fest/

April 19, 2025 - Personal Projects* at Mahala's place. Bring something to work on while we converse. Randall may demonstrate his smartphone pouch pattern. E-mail the Webmaster for directions. southwestcostumers@gmail.com

May 24, 2024 - Plaster of Perils* at Tasha's place. We'll experiment with doing foot and leg casts using plaster gauze to help design fitted shoes and stockings. E-mail the Webmaster for directions. southwestcostumers@gmail.com

June 6-8, 2025 - Phoenix Fan Fusion at the Phoenix Convention Center. https://www.phoenixfanfusion.com/

CASFS Book & Media Social

Your Webmaster also organizes a monthly activity of the Central Arizona Speculative Fiction Society's (CASFS) Book and Media Social.  We get together once a month to talk about a pre-selected book, film or other media experience for a bit. After that, conversation can go anywhere. We meet at 7PM on the third Tuesday of every month at the Denny's restaurant at the northeast corner of 35th Avenue and Bethany Home Road in Phoenix. We run a Zoom meeting in parallel to the in-person one, so you can participate even if you can't get your corpus to Phoenix.

Check out the CASFS Book & Media Social Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1602983896683877, the AZ Fandom Facebook Group and the CASFS web page at http://casfs.org/book_social.html for directions to the meeting or the Zoom link or e-mail books@casfs.org

Here is the book list for the rest of 2024:

November 19, 2024 Leviathan Wakes by James SA Corey
December 17, 2024 Unauthorized Bread by Corey Doctorow

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