Haidate for Date!

 Hello!

On 22 September I was at mom's place and started working on another part for my Masamune cosplay, namely these.. things.. that he seemingly has (on some pictures at least) for some sort of protection or whatnot.

These two black flaps that start just under his belt

Pretty visible on this game screenshot

I did some searching online on Google and ended up with the conclusion that these could eventually be some sort of haidate armor.. if they aren't part of his undershirt that is. Maybe. I don't know, I couldn't come up with any other explanation for what they could possibly be otherwise that would make some sort of sense.. not like Sengoku Basara makes much sense to begin with though. :'D

Haidate set example - a pretty fabulous one at that
(photo is not mine, I found it somewhere in the dark corners of internet)

I don't plan to be historically accurate or anything and I don't have time for traditional methods so I decided to just go cosplay style over the making of these. I thought taking some craft foam and putting fabric over it would be sufficient enough and then just attaching the things to a tie -that I wrap around my hips- would do the trick. Off to test if it works!

Starting position - a piece of craft foam and black elastic

On this day I didn't really do much progress on the haidate because I was busy finishing the arm guards for Masamune. I did cut the craft foam in half and pick a fabric though (black PVC fabric) and measured and cut out fitting pieces of it. I planned to make a sort of "pouch" to fit the craft foam pieces into because this would be the cleanest and probably easiest way to do it; I didn't feel like wrapping fabric around and hot gluing it or anything messy like that.
So yeah, for that "pouch" I needed pretty much the double of the length of the craft foam piece in fabric, along with some seam allowance just to be on the safe side. I did mark and cut the fabric in half before calling it a day though.

Fabric cutting in progress

 ...

......

*snore*

Okay, so I started these things on 22 September, right? Well, time passed somewhere before I knew what was going on and boom 16th January happened, aka today. I have currently borrowed mom's awesomesauce sewing machine (along with some sewing equipment) to my apartment so it's about time I finish this thing, don't you think?

I started by sewing both the fabric pieces into pouches and that's easy peasy - just folded the fabric in half -right sides against each other- and sewed a straight stitch (I don't need to zigzag PVC, it doesn't fray) at both open sides. Then I just turned the thing inside out which wasn't the easiest because PVC seems to almost glue itself when you put the right sides against each other and put the craft foam piece inside it.

Sewed "pouch" with craft foam going inside

Next up I cut out a fitting piece of elastic black ribbon. I used elastic because it's what was easy to find at mom's place.

Elastic cut out

Of course before I started sewing I zigzaged the ends of the elastic. You don't want it to start unraveling everywhere so that everyone can find you by following the threads...

Ends secured

I noticed at this point that I maybe should have had a little bit more fabric because I didn't have enough to fold the top part of the pouch nicely without it folding over where the craft foam was and well, you don't want to sew over the foam. Oh well, I just put the elastic over the very top edge of the fabric and sewed it on with a straight stitch through the middle. Of course I measured the elastic ribbon prior so that both the fabric parts would be on the middle of it when sewn on.

Sewing about to start..

I repeated the process for the other pouch and just trimmed the fabric that showed above the ribbon and ba-wham! Done!

Finished haidate-ish thing :'D

I wanted to see what it would look like when worn as well so I quickly threw on my Masamune coat and the belt and tied this newly finished thing on. Pretty cool if I do say so myself, even though most of it gets hidden by the coat anygay.

Sorry about the mirror photo (mirrored, duh) and that it's, well, dirty.. and checkered-shirt-Masamune.

Eeyup, that's it for now. I swear I'm relieved of finally having more progress on Masamune. Sure, it's not much at all but I reaaaaaaaally need to finish this cosplay for summer. Gonna work on it more from now on, go me!

Bye!