Challenge

As a challenge to myself and a tribute to my senior year, I have made it a goal to finish four costumes before my freshman year of college, which hopefully will be this fall.  To add an extra twist to my goal, I have added a stipulation to each of the four costumes.

Costume #1 must incorporate some sort of fantasy/costumes armor.

Costume #2 must be made from a pattern I made myself.

Costume #3 must incorporate a homemade hoop skirt.

Costume #4 must be one of my costuming dreams, and I must be very pleased with the outcome of the costume, that means detailing.  

That said, I will now move on to my ideas for the costumes.  For costume #2, I was thinking of making a mascot or Aerith's Advent Childen dress.  I would use a very modified pattern for her bolero though because a homemade jacket pattern is just to complicated for me right now.  I'm leaning more towards the mascot because it's more impressive, but I have all the materials I need for Aerith's costume.  I also have very limited funds and will have to do a lot of saving, so I think Aerith is going to win.  I'm almost positive.
Costume #3, on the other hand, was a cinch to figure out.  I'm going to make one of Meliara Astiar's gowns.  I'm hoping to make either either her first ball gown or her masquerade gown or her court gown.  I'm leaning more toward her masquerade gown.  The court gown is second.
As for costume #4, it's going to be either Rouge's green and yellow costume from X-men or an 18th centurey ball gown.  I'm at an impasse for both.
I'll just say right now that I HAVE NO IDEA what I am going to do for costume #1.  I've never made costume armor before, and I haven't really looked into very many characters with or examples of costume armor either.  But I know I want to make costume armor, for sure. 
So I need to start researching my ideas even more and start calculating costs, time, etc. soon, especially since I have this deadline.  I just hope school slows down so I can more done and have more time to work on my projects.