Touken Ranbu Kashuu Kiyomitsu's scarf and tasuki

Hello again!

My first con is closing in and I'm starting to really rush to get things done! I'm also crossing my fingers that some stuff will arrive on time, especially considering how shitty the post has been lately. One of my packages got sent back to Japan before I even got a notification that it had arrived, boo. I'm 95% certain about my cosplay plans but I can't publish them just yet because yeah, some critical stuff has yet to arrive. Sorry about that. Cosplay plans will be released as soon as possible!

One of the characters I will cosplay at the con is Kashuu Kiyomitsu's casual (aka uchiban) outfit. I sewed the scarf at mom's last Sunday. Luckily the kimono, juban and hakama I can pull directly from my kimono collection since I happen to have perfect pieces for him, haha. But yeah, the scarf I had to make and I started making it with the thought that it's gonna be a piece of cake but yeah, it took me longer than anticipated, mainly because I had problems figuring out the best way to do the tassels at the ends.

Really quickly thrown together outfit test.
(note: mirror photo! aka corpse mode)

The photo quality is shit because the sun had gone down for hours ago and yeah, I only had my crappy apartment light to count on. ._. I couldn't be bothered to dig out my juban so I just kept my long-sleeved shirt under, lol. I might do a more proper test before the con too, we'll see. Heck, I didn't even tie the hakama...

I barely took any progress photos of the making of the scarf; I was too busy trying to get it done before mom would drive me back home. I do have a few pictures to show though, but they're all taken with my cellphone so yeah, the quality is sub-par at best. ^^; Oh and yeah, my cellphone fucks up the colors real bad, lol.

Kebab arm! :DD

I found a suitable fabric in the attic and used the whole fabric width twice for the length; I made the scarf double so that it would be a bit thicker and look nice no matter which side was showing. I sewed the two pieces together and then put right sides together and sewed the scarf into a long tube. To turn the tube the right way I threaded it on my arm (I had left the ends open), like on the photo above, and just grabbed the edge and turned it around.
I had several ideas about how to make the tassels, ranging from using silk ribbon to just cutting them straight out of the fabric. Mom also did a fire resistance test on the fabric to see if we could simply just burn the edges, to keep them from fraying, but the fabric caught fire way too easily so it wasn't an option. Yeah, basically just us trying to see if there was a way to skip the tedious zigzaging part. xD
In the end I decided to cut out two separate pieces (one for each end) from the same fabric and then pre-sew the zigzag on it and then cut it up, next to the zigzag.

Put our idea to the test – it works!

I did try first to cut and then do the zigzag but oh lord, it was such a pain in the butt that I quickly went back to the original plan. Mom later came to ask me how it went and my answer was a straight "tää on perseestä mutta toimii". :DD lol

Second piece done and ready for cutting.

With the tassels done I just took the open edges of the scarf, folded them inside, put the tassel part inside and sewed the whole shit closed. It was a bit hard to get it to look nice on both sides because yeah, this fabric is the same type as the one I made the Star Wars robe from and, well, it lives its own life. I had to rip up the "underside" twice and redo it because it looked like shit. xD

Tassels pinned in place.

I realized a few days later that the tasuki I had used for Yamato no Kami Yasusada was too short to work for Kashuu. The reason is because they have it tied differently – you can see it on the official art book. Yasusada has the tasuki sleeve cord tied the usual way in the front but Kashuu has it tied in a ribbon at the back.

Touken Ranbu art book reveals Kashuu's back!

I had to ask some of my kimono friends how to tie it like that and I got some good suggestions how to make it work! I ended up having to try it several times and it was harder than I thought to get a neat bow. I will need to practise a lot more... or ask someone to tie it for me directly on the back. #lazy

I don't have any progress photos of the tasuki, except for the one below. Yeah, I decided to make a completely new one for Kashuu because I want to be accurate and hey, the fabric only cost 3 € per meter!!
I made it in school today during my handcraft class. The tasuki was made the exact same way as the scarf but because it's a lot narrower I had to use a wooden pole, to push it back to the right side, after I had sewn it into a tube.

Tasuki in tube form, half-way done with turning it back to the right side.

That's about all I have to say for this post. See ya later and thanks for reading my blog! ^^

Shiro Samurai out.