Hello everyone!
Years ago I quickly threw together a shiny Mightyena gijinka (aka human version) which included making a pair of ears for ease of recognizing the character. I took a few progress photos already back then but never got around to publishing a WIP post of how I made them because I wasn't happy with the ears and intended to remake them at some point. Well, that "at some point" finally arrived because I plan to rewear this cosplay at Gingacon.
So if you've ever wondered how to make simple costuming furry accessories then here's my debut experiences lol. I'm sure there's plenty of other more professional ways to do this but I tackled the projectin a hurry with a "random bullshit go" mentality, just winging it from my head. :'D
So if you've ever wondered how to make simple costuming furry accessories then here's my debut experiences lol. I'm sure there's plenty of other more professional ways to do this but I tackled the project
2018 unpublished WIP photo of the starting materials. |
So I started this project and did the first version of these ears in 2018 with some yellow fabric, a scrap piece of fake leather, some threads in matching colors, safety pins and stuffing (not pictured). I drew up a pattern of the general shape of the ears and then transferred that design onto the yellow fabric and cut it out. Mightyena has that type of long pointy ears with the inner ear being almost the same size of the outer ear.
Inner ears also cut out. |
I handstitched the inner ears to the front-facing half of the ears because I didn't want to have as many holes in the leather that a sewing machine would make. That and I liked the rugged look of the handsewing, I thought it was fitting for a hyena Pokémon. In case it's not obvious each ear has a yellow front and a back side and the leather part only goes on the front.
Completed handsewing. |
After that I used a sewing machine to put together the front and back sides. I left the base of each ear open so that I could turn the right side back out again and fill the ears with stuffing.
It was at this point when I realized my mistake. I had not factored in seam allowances and the concept of volume, which meant that the inner ear part ended up way too big, covering almost all of the surface when filled. Another issue was that the fluff made the ears heavy and so they would droop when attached to the wig with safety pins and just wouldn't stay upright. This was a look that worked for my even older Espeon gijinka (first set of ears I made) but it didn't work at all for Mightyena.
It was at this point when I realized my mistake. I had not factored in seam allowances and the concept of volume, which meant that the inner ear part ended up way too big, covering almost all of the surface when filled. Another issue was that the fluff made the ears heavy and so they would droop when attached to the wig with safety pins and just wouldn't stay upright. This was a look that worked for my even older Espeon gijinka (first set of ears I made) but it didn't work at all for Mightyena.
2018 version completed ears. Eww. |
And here ends the 2018 mishaps and efforts and we jump back to the current year of 2024 when I decided that this shit needs an overhaul before I dare wear it out in public again lolol.
Okay so after digging these wonky ears out of my wardrobe my first mission was to open up the base and remove all the stuffing. Once the ears were flat they were easier to handle and so I took a seam ripper in hand and started undoing the handsewn stitches that kept the inner ear in place – after all, one of the two big mistakes was that the inner ear was way too big. Once I freed the inner ears I measured and sketched out the amount I needed to remove on the backside of the fake leather (don't want visible marks!) and then I cut it off carefully. I shaved off like 1 cm from all sides except for the base.
First steps towards an improved appearance! |
I had decided that for Gingacon I wanted to add a fluffy tail to my costume for more recognizability and to have it feel more complete and less like a closet cosplay lol.
I bought some fur fabric from Eurokangas in Oulu, it's not a perfect color but it was like the only brown option that looked passable as canine fur and didn't make me think of a bear or moose. I would have ideally wanted a darker, more cholocate brown fur but I was really short on time and the options were very limited. It sucks that the fabric store in Kemi closed down and that the Eurokangas in Tornio also disappeared already years ago.
I worked on the ears and the tail simultaneously, swapping back and forth between the two depending on where I was and what equipment I had to use. The tail is a very simple creation; I just bought a roughly 35 cm piece of fur, the width of the fabric, and then I folded that in half and cut the other end into a tapering tip while leaving the folded, now upper half to be the base of the tail.
I was convinced the 80 needle would break but it didn't?? |
I've never sewn fur fabric before and especially not furry fur like this. It's quite difficult to keep the hairs in check and when I was cutting the end of the tail into a tip I had loose fur flying all over the place. xD Luckily my new rehabilitation place has a hobby room and there's a sewing machine there, albeit an old Husqvarna one. I was quite distrusting of the machine because there weren't anything but 80 strength needles and the fur I had was very thick – I was sure it would break or jam while I sewed the tail shut. Yet somehow the needle didn't break during the whole odyssean ordeal and I just sat there wondering if the sewing machine was secretly an overpowered Autobot on a mission to save my day or if I had somehow cheesed the law of unfortunate setbacks. GG needle, well played.
Tail edge sewn shut. |
Sewing the tail took quite a lot longer than I thought it would because I spent so much extra time trying to keep the fur hairs away from the presser foot! I mean I had to constantly be there re-arranging the direction of the fluff and trying to move away as much stray hairs as possible to not have an excessive amount get stuck in the seam. It's an impossible mission to complete perfectly but I did what I could.
Turning the tail back out. It's so fluffy. |
I left a relatively large gap up on one of the sides near the top so that I could easily turn the fur side back out and later fill it with stuffing to have it actually look fluffy and not like a hairy pancake.
I left the progress of the tail for a bit and jumped back into finishing the ears. For this I paid mom a visit because I needed some additional stuffing to fill the tail (the stuffing I removed from the ears was nowhere near enough) and I also wanted to brainstorm ideas for reattaching the faux leather parts onto the ears without having to undo all the seams first, to separate the front and back pieces, because that was a lot of extra work I didn't want to do and didn't really have the time left to do either. I mean now that the ears were already assembled I couldn't exactly handsew the inner ears back on because the stitches would show on the backside and that would look fugly.
Hello vliesofix my new friend! |
Mom had recently ordered this material called vliesofix from Germany for her sewing/craft projects. It behaves similarly to interfacing fabric except that it has heat-activated glue on both sides with a peelable film on the other side.
So what I did was cut out a suitable piece and put the glue side down so that it would stick to the backside of the inner ears. My vliesofix piece was slightly too small to fit both ears but this was easy to solve by just using other scrap pieces to cover the missed spot; make sure not to have the edges overlapping because that might make peeling off the film more difficult.
Preparing the vliesofix. |
I used an old towel to protect the ironing board from glue. You could of course just cut the vliesofix directly into the correct shape to minimize product waste and glue residue, but as I was already working with scrap pieces I didn't bother. I also made sure to protect the fake leather by folding over the towel on top, before ironing, so that the iron wouldn't touch them directly in case of damage (the iron was on a high heat setting). If you're working with delicate fabrics, or fabrics of which heat-resistance properties you are unsure about, you might want to sandwich them between another heat-tolerant fabric like cotton.
I gotta admit though that these photos were from my second try – my first try was a major oopsie because I accidentally put the glue side facing up (it's quite difficult to tell them apart on a quick glance) and when I pulled away the towel, to reveal my work, the ears were still there but the vliesofix had stuck to the towel instead and I had to tear it off. xD I has the dumb!
Successful attachment. |
I cut tiny scrap pieces into the shape I needed to fill in that one corner that didn't fit into the block. After the first glue side was fully attached I trimmed off all the excess product and then peeled off the film to reveal the second glue side. This side I would then attach to the yellow part of the ear by ironing it again. I used the towel of course for extra security although it also meant that the vliesofix took a bit longer to fully stick. Despite my efforts it didn't fully attach itself (glue wore out or evaporated or something, I dunno) so I had to use some fabric glue on a few spots to finalize the attachment of the inner ears. For once in my life fabric glue actually seemed to work.
Example of the wire shape before insertion. |
After completing the wire frames I just inserted them into each ear and then I sewed the base of the ear shut and called them done. Done for now at least. Yes, I intentionally omitted the stuffing altogether for the remake although I did briefly consider other attachment methods than the safety pins. I mean safety pins are an inexpensive and effortless way to attach something to a wig without it being semi-permanent, although it can be a bit cumbersome to set up as you need to make sure that the ears are on roughly the same height and position etc. I did consider buying a thin headband and attaching the ears to that for an easy wearable, but I saw no suitable ones in the stores I had time to check.
With the ears completed I could focus on the tail.
I stuffed it to my liking and then came the part that I kicked myself over – I had not paid any mind to how to attach the tail to my costume in advance. Or more like I had thought about options but I hadn't foreseen that yeah, it would be a lot easier to add belt loops or whatnot if you do it before sewing the tail shut on all sides except for that one gap. -_-
I decided to add elastic bands so that I could just thread through any sashes or belts to attach the tail. The hard part was sewing said elastics onto the backside of the base of the tail without losing my sanity along the way; all the measuring was just rough eyeballing and gut feeling because there was no way to really know where the heck any correct placements were because of constant shifting lol. Having one hand inside the tail (and locked to only one entrance direction) and one hand unable to properly keep things in place, due to how thick the fur was etc, made it really challenging to handsew the elastics in place. It would have helped had I kept two openings on each side of the tale because then I would have had more control to adjust once my hand with the needle went in. So yeah, the elastics aren't perfectly aligned but whatever, they do their purpose and as they'll always be against my back no one will really be staring at them.
The final task was to handsew the gap closed. |
I finished the tail by handsewing that entry point closed (secure the stuffing!) and with that my Mightyena cosplay was upgraded
Finished tail, it's honestly pretty stonks! |
I would have wanted to try the costume on before Gingacon to see how it looks but I don't really have time for that anymore; I haven't even found the costume parts nor started packing yet and I'm leaving on Friday, send help.
Oh well, I will try to get some cosplay photos soon so that I can put a link here that shows how these furry accessories look when worn!