April 30, 2012

Ichito's 'flap' pt.3

 How's it going? :)

Today my youngest cousin was here and I had to 'babysit' him or whatever, we played Nintendo DS and mom sewed him a cushion cover so he could make a coming mother's day present to his mom. So while he was painting on it I ran back and forth the house trying to work on my cosplay. He's 9 btw.

So today's progress.. well, first off I had to iron the flower designs to set it and then I went to cut out the lining pieces.

Lining cut out. (back piece)
Front piece lining. Edges are zigzaged.
A while after I had zigzaged the pieces the little kid left with his dad and after that mom decided to take a nap while I continued sewing. But before I went and paid the sewing machine another visit I decided to take a photo...

Yeah, a face censor again... sexy me gusta.
Ignore the fact that I'm wearing my everyday clothing underneath, I don't have the kimonos or pants done yet as you know... oh, and the jacket's front derps because I lack the obi too.
After closing the side seams I was afraid that the 'flap' would get stuck half-way up my ass.. luckily it didn't and it seems roomy enough (it doesn't fall of when walking though) I will be able to wear that dark blue kimono and hakama under it.

After that I went to sew on the lining. I had a hard time figuring out how to attach it but after some help by mom I went and tested sewing it on...

afdsasghjs
I dunno how visible it is on this photo but one of the lining side seams didn't match up with the 'flap' side seam. So I had to take in around 2 centimeters of the lining to get the seams to be aligned... but...

Oh snap...
Turned out the rest of the lining was waaaay too short after that seam modification. Urgh, just as mom worried it would. I had to unstitch the whole thing. Back to start... not my day today. After that I got stuck watching tv and celebrating Walpurgis...

Bye!

April 28, 2012

Ichito's 'flap' pt.2

 Hi all!

Today after dinner I decided to hand-paint the design on that 'flap' thingy. So first of I needed to have a reference picture of Ichito at hand and I also happen to know what those designs actually are supposed to be - higanbana - aka spiderlily.

Lycoris Radiata
Ichito reference
 So knowing what I'm actually trying to paint is a little bonus. But I drew mostly according to the character reference and some artistic freedom.. because it would have peen a major pain in the ass to draw every damn flower and line exactly the same.
I did iron the fabric prior to painting so it was wrinkle-free. So yeah, here is today's progress photos and please excuse the crappy lighting again, the colors get a bit fucked up.

Sketched some "base flowers" on the fabric.
Started painting...
Painted some more...
Started doing the lines...
More lines. Half of it done pretty much.
Other half done and started painting the bottom "rings"...
Finished!
I didn't count the time but I think it took me around 4-5 hours to finish. Urgh. I'm sick of drawing lines now. XD Now I just need to sew together the front and back piece at the sides and fix the edges and probably add a lining to the front's backside.
Ah... now I've earned myself some chips and a bottle of påskmust. lol

Bye bye!

April 27, 2012

Ichito's 'flap' pt.1

Hellou!

Pfft, today mom got my depressed ass to do something instead of being a half-dead angsty sausage in front of the computer all day. Yeah, I had a shitty day today, didn't go to school etc...
So with her help I started working on Ichito's 'flap' thingy late during the evening instead of completely wasting the day.

Sorry again for the bad lighting but here's a few photos of today's progress:

Fabric cut out. Pattern still attached.
I zigzaged all around the 'flap' so the edges won't fray while I'm painting it later...
The fabric paint I will use. Slate blue.
Testing paint on scrap fabric.
To the right is only solid blue color and to the left is blue with some white blended in at the tips. I think I prefer the blended version so I will do the 'flap' that way, it looks better... not as boring, at least I think so.

Tomorrow hopefully I will paint the real thing, it's too late already and my eyes are going afdfghsgfh on me. *yawns* So tomorrow it is.

Goodnight!

April 26, 2012

Uppcon is green!

Today I got my Uppcon ticket! So now I'm coming! 8D (even though bad date, rush after school ends~)
I will be sleeping at my father's place a bit outside Stockholm and my twin Jäätynyt Enkeli will keep me company at the con. Dad might drive us every morning or otherwise we'll take the train, haven't planned yet how we'll get to Uppsala.

My cosplay plans aren't set yet, but this is what I had in my mind:

Friday - Gin Ichimaru (Bleach)


Saturday - Ichito (Asaki, Yumemishi)


Sunday - Toshizo Hijikata (Hakuouki: Shinsengumi Kitan)


I might change Hijikata for Okita, not sure yet.. it depends. And Ichito is not 100% sure either, but I want to do a BOOM unique/cool cosplay for Saturday. XD Yeah.. we'll see but this is what my plans look like at the moment.

April 18, 2012

"Projektarbete" change

So today after school I went and checked if my former Swedish teacher was still at her working room. She is one of my two supervisors (normally you only have one supervisor.. but I'm trololo so I have two, my art teacher being the other one) for this one big "projektarbete" (project work) every student has to do during the 3rd and final year of "gymnasiet" or "lukio" for you Finns. Upper secondary school for ages 16-19. So well, due to personal reasons I will go a 4th year in school and that means I'll also get an extra year to do this project work. It's a big task, you chose one thing you want to work with (it's pretty free but it has to connect to the program you've chosen to go in some way) that you have to work on independently and I think you got around one year to finish it. We got to choose what teacher we wanted as our supervisor too.

- Wait. Why am I telling you all this boring non-cosplay crap you ask?

Well, I'll come to that now. Me, being the herpderpgeek I am decided one year ago I wanted to do something unique as my project work. Something I would feel inspired to work on instead of the opposite. So I asked my supervisor if I could do a costume... yes, a cosplay costume... and it was a yes. Yay. Actually my supervisor (aka former Swedish teacher) has an interest in Japan and I've been showing her some of my cosplays before with positive feedback, haha. My art teacher, the second supervisor, used to be my sewing teacher in "grundskolan" ("peruskoulu" in Finnish, nine-year compulsory school) as well as my art teacher for many years so she has been helping me sewing original character clothes years ago. xD

Okay, so this all is old stuff. But what is new is that today, as I said in the beginning of this blog post, I visited my supervisor. I asked her if it was possible for me to change the chosen character because I had not started working on the costume properly yet and because I already had other cosplay plans set for this year (and some for 2013 even) and I probably wouldn't have time to work on this "project work cosplay" between the other ones. So the former character was Kai from the Luminous Arc game and the new one is... Masamune Date from Sengoku Basara. Yes, that armor version I mentioned earlier I'll do for Porukka Kasaan!'s Sengoku Basara cosplay group next year. It was a good move to switch because now I can kill two birds with one stone. I'll need to cosplay Date anyway because I signed up for the group and now it's also my school work. Now I will really have to do the armor version for the group and get it done too, if not by anything else then by school pressure. Yeah, damn sweet.

So my plans went from this...

... to this:

I'm perfectly sane. :'DDD lolnope
And I will do Kai someday, just not now.

April 15, 2012

Finishing Ichito's "jacket"

 Hiya!

So today I finished Ichito's "jacket" hitatare? chihaya? I don't know thingy.
First off I attached the sleeves to the body and then I just hemmed everything. I left the sleeves open on both sides and the body of the garment is fully open at the sides too.

Sleeves are on.
Huge sleeves...
After hemming everything I just had left to do those chest cord decoration thingies... so here's how I made them:

Draw the shape.
 First off I went to our outside storage and cut off a tiny square of this one leather-ish plum colored fabric. Then I took a reference and drew the shape of those flame/flower/whatever decorations and cut them out.

Sew them to the ribbons... (notice sewing machine left fugly marks on them -.-)
... and then sew them to the collar of the "jacket".
And then it was finished. Now I can just tie them whenever wearing it. Although I could have made those ribbons a bit longer mom pointed out, oh well.

Ah, lovely thing ~
Now I have left to do the obi, "flap" with higanbana design, dark blue kimono, tekkou, bracelet, tattsuke hakama-ish pants, feet wrappings, shoes, eyepatch... err... let's just say everything else. OTL

Bye bye!

April 14, 2012

Cosplay stuff in the mail yesterday.. but not mine.

This update is pretty... I don't know...
The kimono and glasses I ordered for my twin's Sannan cosplay (Hakuouki) arrived yesterday (yes, both of them at the same time) and well, I felt a need to test them to see that everything was alright -so I could leave positive feedback in eBay/Tradera- and so. And well, I had the house for myself most of the morning so I did a super quick test to see what I would look like as Sannan... and no I'm not going to actually cosplay him. xD I just grabbed my Byakuya wig and my white under kimono from my Bleach shihakusho and put on the green vintage kimono and round glasses and voilá.

Weird smile...
 Ignore the lack of make-up and that I look a bit tired... because I was. Mom came like 9 on the morning and went "CLEAN THE WHOLE HOUSE WHILE WE ARE AWAY, K?" dsfhahsfdaf.

Tried to look serious... it doesn't work during morning time...
 Yeah. I still don't knooooooooowwwww.

April 13, 2012

Ichito sleeve progress pt.2

Alrighty everyone, I did the second sleeve today. Here's the breakdown!

Preparations for marking every buttonhole...
Close-up of the marking process. Dots.
After that I started to sew the buttonholes. Again. I had to install the memory thingy myself this time, it worked after some errors...

... and then I got one like this. It doesn't look anything like a buttonhole man. -.-
I kept doing them anyway and when I had finished a little bit more than half the sleeve...

.. I finally got the first perfect one. Finally.
But that joy didn't last long because of course directly after that perfect one...

IT MADE NOT ONE BUT THREE MEGA DERP BUTTONHOLES FFFFFFFF-
Okay, machines will never work like you want them do. For every job well done they will pay you back with three times shit. Don't trust them.

Problem?
I promise, it trolled me.
But that wasn't the end of the trolling... because it seems three derpholes wasn't enough....

FFFFFFFFFFFFOOUUURRRRRRRRRRRR!!!1 Need I say more?
But when I had almost finished the sleeve something impossible happened...

It suddenly did two perfect buttonholes. What the fuck.
Wow, this thing sure can't decide if it wants to be my friend or not... OTL
Oh well, 43 buttonholes later and some raging I made the slits and threaded ribbon through them, just like I did for the other sleeve yesterday night.

Ah, it's handy to have the whole roll.
And well, then I just tied and burned the ribbon ends and it was done. Here's one in-progress pic:

Not sure if gusta.
The sleeves aren't attached and stuff needs to be hemmed and, err... lots of stuff left. But I'll finish this sucker! 8D

That's all for this time, laterz!

April 12, 2012

Ichito sleeve progress pt.1

Ah, lovely. I actually did some cosplay progress today, go me!

So, well.. here's some explanations and photos of what I did today. Sorry in advance for the crappy lighting, it was late... err, it still is but whatever.

 Okay, so first off I had to figure out a lot of things and mom helped me count how many "full patterns" (read: every different "ribbon loop" before it started over again) I could fit into the sleeve and stuff... I suck at maths, big time. Then I had to decide how close to the arm opening I wanted the ribbon to run, how big I wanted the buttonholes to be and how long I wanted the "long part" and the "short part" of the ribbon to be and how-- ... screw it, my explanations make no sense anyway so I'll proceed to show pics instead. xD

Ah, mass producing buttonholes.
Mom helped me to check how the memory function on this black sewing machine worked and after I found this machine part explanation after some googling because we couldn't find the manual we got it to work. Yay. She then set the memory function to make same sized buttonholes and then showed me how to sew a few and then I took over.

Buttonholes, buttonholes, buttonholes... Did I say buttonholes?
After what felt like forever my huge-ass-sleeve was filled with buttonholes. Yay. Some of them ended up being mildly derpy when others were perfect. Hah, machines won't do perfect work all the time...

Poor innocent fabric gets cut...
After that I snipped off all the loose threads and began to make slits into the buttonholes so they became... well... buttonholes. Only I wouldn't be using them for buttons.

Ah, lovely blue ribbon. Now it looks better.
 After all the slits were done I just took that blue ribbon and threaded it through the sleeve, making sure it was loose enough to not bunch up. Then I just burned the ends and tied them together and then finito.

Tomorrow the other sleeve will receive the same treatment run sleeve run! and hopefully I'll get some better photos of the thing and maybe I'll even have time to attach the sleeves to the jacket-thingy-whatever-it-is (it looks a bit like a hitatare or chihaya I think...) but before that.. *yawns*

.. I'm off to bed. Night.

Desucon 2012 tickets!

 Hi!

So, I've been immensely bored all day. I went and grabbed our other black sewing machine earlier today (we have 3 sewing machines: an overlocker, a black normal one and an über high-tech one. lol) and put it on the table. Mom needs to show me how to do buttonholes with it when she gets home so that I can continue on one of my cosplays, namely Ichito. I decided I will do craploads of buttonholes on the sleeves and then thread some blue ribbon through it. Our first plan was to do belt loops but it didn't work out because in that case the ribbon wouldn't have been seen on the inside.. like it's supposed to. So buttonholes it is.
Man, I've barely started and I need to finish this cosplay before Desucon in early June and then I need to make Okita's yukata too. Thank god that one is very easy though.. but knowing me I'll be stressing to get both cosplays done last minute anyway. *shrugs*

Oh well, I just went a swing to the kitchen and checked the post on the kitchen table.. there was a small letter... OMG DESUCON TICKETS! <3 Yep, totally heading for Desucon this year!!

See you!

April 9, 2012

When a decanter makes you ridiculously happy...

Some time ago I was searching all the corners of the internet for a glass bottle, with a glass cork, that would have a resemblance to ochimizu, as seen in the Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan anime. I checked eBay, Tradera, random googling and everything I found was either widely different from what I wanted and if the bottle itself happened to have the right shape then the cork was waaaaay off... and if both were okay it was always over 25 cm in height and thus a no-no... and I didn't want anything bigger than 20 cm at most, preferably around 15 cm. So after searching several days for a close enough decanter I admitted to myself it indeed was a pain in the ass to find a good one and that this search would take me quite some time... but then I stumbled upon one auction at Huuto.net that made me go omfgyayafghdafghd! It qualified for all my requirements; it was cheap, it was small, it had a glass cork and both the cork and the bottle had a close enough resemblance omg so lucky in general to what I was looking for... so my feelings were like this:


Luckily I had a good friend who could buy it for me and then Jäärä delivered it to me before Chibicon, yays~

Aaah, pretty little thing that I thought I'd never be so happy to own.
Now I'm just wondering.. I need some red liquid to keep in it when I'm cosplaying Souji Okita at Desucon in Lahti. I will use it as a prop.

Bright liquid is bright.
So yeah, I need to find something that looks like that... and it's a bonus if it's edible. Yay for carrying around ochimizu... but I'll have to resist the urge to drink it at the con... resist the urge to drink it... lol

Anyone have any ideas what I could use? ^_^ (I should be able to buy it in Finland/Sweden)

April 8, 2012

Chibicon 2012 behind + Next con

Chibicon came and went. It was a not-so-big con held at Oulu's Pohjankartano, Finland. Finally a con in the north, big plus for that from me.
I must say I was surprised how big the con building was, it was amazing to hold a con in! Hmm, let's see.. the con itself was nice and I had a good time. Nothing really to complain about. Although I must say the number of cosplayers was surprisingly small.. needless to say the camera running was minimal because, well, there simply wasn't so much to photograph. Oh well, it was to be expected because it was Chibicon after all.
About the merchandise, well, it was the standard con merchandise pretty much - mangas, plushies, figures, doujinshis and a booth for ramune and other Japanese treats. I didn't buy anything because I'm saving money for the summer cons and because I didn't find anything that made me go OMGMUSTBUYNOW.
 I also went and watched the FFFight and it was entertaining.. although I noticed the same people participating twice... *shrugs* I also attended the Sengoku Basara panel which was nice.

I went there with my friend Jäärä who came up to my place late on Thursday. On Friday we con prepped and tested our Chibicon cosplays; we had a photoshoot outside. Most photos turned out pretty high on the derp scale but I think we got some decent ones too. Here's a few pictures:

The Kuchikis and their plushies.
FLY. REACH THE HEAVENS SEAWEED MAN!
Jarmo, the Seaweed Ambassador, went flying. Yes, we named him Jarmo. At one point I accidentally tossed him over our terrace field... good thing he didn't fall into that hole behind the snow and the fence itself... would have been harder to get him up. lol

Yo, I'm fine man.
I will upload more photos to my cosplay.com account slowly the coming days, so if you're interested be sure to check it out.

•Next con•

The next con I'm going to attend will be Desucon in Lahti, 8-10 June. I'm already longing for it! Gotta continue working on the cosplays...

It seems Kemi's comic/manga day will be held 18-20 May so I will be there too. What cosplay I will wear I have not decided yet.. most likely I will recycle an older cosplay. I will inform later when I've decided which one.