One day in town... with cosplay in mind!

 Hi everyone!

Sorry this post is actually from 28th May, I didn't have time to write it earlier so now I'm writing it in the middle of the night.
So today I finished school very early and instead of walking to town and directly taking the bus home I decided to look around for cosplay stuff. The cosplay stress has been gnawing inside me very much the last day and it didn't help when I realized Desucon is not this weekend but the weekend after that... oh mama save me.

Oh well, when I got to the shopping center I went into Tiimari and the bookstore.. Tiimari didn't have anything for my cosplay needs (and even if they had I could probably find the item for half the price somewhere else...) but from the bookstore I bought some black thin round elastic band. I will use it for his bead bracelet. He only has it on his left hand.

Oh yes, bad guys have nail polish ~

Öblöblöb.. err, then I went into Citymarket (general big store with food, clothes, make-up etc) and bought a bag of make-up sponges and Herbina brand fragrance-free hair spray. Both of course for cosplay purposes... and the hair spray I'm not even going to use on hair... it's going on my face. I'm so cheap I don't buy proper make-up sealers. lol

After that I left the shopping center and headed for a second-hand store, the one I'm most familiar with. I was looking for some shoes with a slightly upwards pointing 'nose' that I could modify... had no luck. Went to the next second-hand market that is called Vaarin Vintti ("grandpa's attic") where I've only been, hmm, three or four times now I think. The judo jacket I saw there weeks ago was still for sale, 10 € lol. Oh well, I was looking for shoes, not judo jackets! But I didn't find any good enough shoes.. everything that was semi-ok (not pointy though.. so still kinda wrong) was too small for me and when I found one with right size it was way off in design. I looked around the whole place at least three times to make sure I didn't miss anything.. I didn't. Bleh.
So after I had dug through the two second-hand stores I knew of in town I decided to try and find again that one fabric store I found last Saturday when I was in town with a new friend. Turned out said fabric store was in front of me when I was standing facing away from the other second-hand store's entrance. The fabric store mostly only had curtain fabrics and not so much clothing fabric... but I found a yellow brown-ish kinda mustard-y but not quite colored fabric that could maaaaybe work for Ichito's obi. I got a free test piece of it. Yay.

It doesn't want to photograph it's real color.. it's not that shiny and a bit more yellow (flash photo)

After that I started walking down a street I had not walked down before and when I got to the corner I passed by something that looked like a third second-hand store... with the exception that I didn't even know of its existence until I walked by it, stopped right in my tracks and went inside. XD
I didn't have to search for many minutes before I found the shoe part of the store... and my eyes spotted these beige mocca-ish (I guess) shoes with a nice upward-ish nose. It's not sharp but at least it points upwards. I tried one of them on and noticed they seemed just a tiny bit too small but still okay. These were by far the best shoe candidates I had seen today (and only cost 5 € and were in good shape) so I decided to buy them. Hey I'm running out of time and I highly doubt I'd find something better for this emergency so let's go with these. As the Finns say, "cosplay ilman tuskaa on teeskentelyä" which translates to something like "cosplay without pain is pretending".

Close enough shoes... now just to make them green somehow...

After that I paid a visit to another fabric store, this time searching for a dark blue fabric for Ichito's kimono. I found one that I thought was fitting so I ended up getting 3 meters of it, lol the store owner was soooo confused when I tried to explain I was doing a kimono and I wanted it done a certain way... guess that's why mom was like "lol you bought like 1 meter too much fabric, she either tricked you into buying more or is just generally bad at what she's doing". Yeah, mom used to own a fabric store too... I tried to call her prior to buying but she didn't answer ahjfsgjad. Oh well, I at least have extra fabric if I mess up... and if I don't I probably have enough to make a vest or something like that. *shrugs* 
I also bought a tiny bit of this light gray very stretchy fabric because I figured gray elastic bands do not exist, just white and black ones. I will use that gray fabric for his eye wrap thingies and possibly even hair tie.

Let's finish with a photo of the rest of the purchases of today:

Make-up sponges, hair spray, black elastic band, gray stretchy fabric, dark blue fabric.

Goodbye for now!

Ichito's 'flap' pt.5

Woah, feels like I've been working on this thing forever... and I'm still not done. :c

Oh well, today I got the bottom of the front 'flap' sewn closed so a little bit closer to finish it. So I started by folding in the edges like I did on the back piece some time ago. I had started sewing it closed half-way when I noticed that it derped.

Not cool...

Turned out the lining is a bit too short so the white fabric made this fugly bump in the corner that was just eww do not want.

So my plan A didn't work out on the front as well as it did on the back piece. Let me show:

My original plan (finished back piece)

So when that didn't work I went and asked mom for advice and she said to try and fold the front (with the paintings) over to the lining side and nothing more. It did seem to work after a pinning test.

Pinning front to check...

And then just sew. I folded in the excess lining neatly (it was longer) and then folded the front slightly over the folded lining.

Lining side of the front

Front of the... well, front

After that I stroked the lining to try and get out bumps and shit and pinned it in place, at the top part, so that later I can sew the lining completely attached.

Pinning lining..

But I have one problem... I can't decide do I want to do a wide elastic on the top so it stays on my hips or if I want to do some kind of ties...

Sayonara!

Immortal spirit's ninja pants pt.4

Finished my 'ninja pants' today!

So here is today's progress ~
First off I continued with the ties. I ironed them prior to sewing to make life a bit easier.

Ironed and ready for the sewing machine

Started sewing, folding in the edges...

 And several meters of ties later I just had left to pin it onto the pant's top part and sew it on.

Front pinned

I made sure to cover the "pleat seam" on both the front and back. That's why the ties are not as wide on the body...

Front sewn (back pinned)

And after that I had a pair of almost complete 'ninja pants' for our immortal but kinda psycho spirit.. namely Ichito. xD

Front

Side-ish

Back-ish

Now I need to make the feet wrappings and also finish the 'flap' and after that I'm off to try and find another dark blue fabric for his kimono because, as I said earlier, I didn't find more of that one we already had at home. So I will most likely have to buy a whole different fabric.

See ya!

Immortal spirit's ninja pants pt.3

Hi everyone!

Remember earlier when I said that after I'd finish the eyepatch I'd continue working on the hakama? Well...

I LIED

Oh well, I made progress today instead. So it's all good.
Earlier I had tried to sew a straight seam all around the pant legs and tried to pull the thread so that the fabric would wrinkle... but it turned out to be a major pain in the butt so I decided to hell with it and let's just do lots of pleats instead...

Pleating, pleating...

I think it took... 4 or 5 tries before I got both the pleated pant leg and the 'feet tube' to match. 50 cm around. I test pinned them together to see that they actually did fit.

Test pinning

retard!ninja pants. One leg sewn, other untouched...

After that I repeated the steps for the other pant leg. That one didn't take as many tries to get right. Good. When that was done I took in the "feet tubes" because they were a bit big at the ankle and up.

Take a bit in so it fits better...

And then mom helped me cut out four pieces of the same fabric for the ties. I zigzaged around the edges and sewed three of them together at the ends so I had one super long tie and one short. The short one will be for the back and the long one for the front.

Ties

After that I got tired of sewing so I decided to quit for today. Hopefully tomorrow I will finish the ties and attach them to my 'ninja pants' so I can actually wear them.

Bye.

Eyepatch - because just wraps won't cut it

 Hi all.

I was supposed to continue working on the "ninja pants" for Ichito.. but.. I felt like doing something small before I continued on them.. so I did his eyepatch. I've been trying to look if he has an eyepatch "plate" under those wrappings and it seems he does, at least on these two pictures if you look closely...

His wrappings are loose here but it seems like he has something covering his eye...

Notice that rounded edge poking out...

 So yeah, there's a lack of references to go by (obscure game is obscure...) but from what I can tell it do indeed look like he... well...

(yeah I'm not tired at all..)

 But here goes~

Sorry I didn't take progress pictures but what I did was I went and got a craft foam piece (color doesn't matter), cut it into shape and rounded the corners a bit. Then I picked up a scrap piece of those 'feet tubes' and cut out two pieces, slightly bigger than the craft foam piece. I zigzaged around the fabric and it looked like this:

The piece to the left is "right side" and soft, the one to the right is "wrong side" and kinda leather-ish

 Then I just took the side of the fabric that I wanted to be against my eye (the softer side) and sewed it to the craft foam piece at the two ends. I tried to turn in the longer sides but noticed I had cut the fabric a bit too short for that so I tried to glue them onto the foam and even use jesus tape (read: duct tape) but it didn't really work either. *shrugs* Oh well, I took the other fabric piece and this one was to be the side facing outwards, so I used the leather-ish side. Sewed the ends again to the foam and then I tried to fold in the sides over to the back but it proved to be a pain in the butt and I had to cut the foam a bit shorter to get the other side to fold in. lol my explanations probably make no sense. OTL I did get the zigzaged edges over to the back (where they won't be seen) after a lot of tweaking but it resulted in a tiny 'airbag' in the back.. oh well, not that I really mind because the 'airbag' actually makes the thing more comfortable over my eye. xD;

It's kinda fugly but it works...

My comment:

Oh well, it works for its purpose and it's not like it's going to be seen so much anyway because those wraps (which I will make later) will be over it and thus cover it... at least it's comfortable (and bendable) so that's good, comfort is always appreciated in cosplay... how comfortable it now is to be half-blind for a day...

Bye bye!

Immortal spirit's ninja pants pt.2

What's up?

Today most of the day I've been helping mom cleaning the whole house and then I watched the very exciting icehockey match between Finland and USA, it was very even until the very end when Finland did a 3-2 goal and won. <3 Err.. enough of that.
But yeah, most of my day has been busy but at least I got some cosplay progress done, namely made the "feet tubes" for Ichito. Yeah, no socks. I just took some gray slightly stretchy fabric we had at home, cut two rectangular pieces, zigzaged around and sewed them to.. well, tubes. And that's it. Didn't do anything else for today because it's pretty late. Tomorrow I'll hopefully attach them to Ichito's pants and also cut out the ties for the hakama too.
Oh, lastly a photo of the "feet tubes". And yes, I will make and wrap those bandages over them later, hopefully out of the same fabric as the tubes.

That's all.

Immortal spirit's ninja pants pt.1

Oh sweet Jesus, two updates in one day. I sure have been productive today, ohohoh ~

Even though the 'flap' isn't completely finished yet I decided to tackle the next task, namely Ichito's hakama-ish pants. Mom was confused at first when I tried to explain that I needed to make some kind of 'tubes' below the knees of the pants, so I could tie those feet wrappings on top of them. I also wanted to make 'tubes' so that the pant cuffs wouldn't ride up all the time. So err, after some explaining that lead to nowhere I tried to think of what the closest to Ichito's pants was.. and then I found this when googling:

NINJA PANTS!

Or well, tattsuke hakama I believe they're also called.

Now she got it. She said I could go buy some long gray socks and sew them on... but that I will get back to later...

I needed to go dig in one of mom's "pattern files" after the pattern for those wide pants that we had used earlier as a base and modified to make hakama. I did find it and after some doubts, measuring and pattern tweaking (to make it smaller) we managed to get the dark brown fabric to be just enough. I couldn't even take any seam allowances and the front and back pattern touched each other...

Fabric just cut out

Mom cut the fabric for me just before she left to go visit her mom (Mother's day in Finland today) because, well, I'm a lefty and sometimes using right-hand scissors gets super hard... sghjdfghs. Then she left, after giving me some instructions what to do. So I went and zigzaged around all the four parts. After that I sewed the two back parts together at the "butt seam" and same thing with the front. lol And when that was done I started to measure out those hakama side openings...

Pinning openings

 And then I just sewed around the folded piece. It formed a triangle, like this:

lololo my camera made the dark brown fabric look blue/violet. WHAT THE HELL.

 After that my 'ninja pants' had started to look slightly like... well, pants. So I pinned the front to my t-shirt and held the back up with my hand. Buuuuuuuuut when I was doing that I accidentally scratched myself on one of the pins...

Pins are evil

But I didn't bother to go get a plaster instantly or even do anything to it, I just went on with what I had been doing before. lol

(ignore dirty mirror)

 The side seams aren't sewed together, I just pinned them in place. Mostly just testing what the side openings looked like and if the front and back pieces were a good enough length after doing some pinned-to-place pleats. Oh, speaking of pleats. I had to unstitch and redo the "butt pleats" two (or was it three?) times before I got it right because the fabric made a fugly horizontal big wrinkle close to the stitch I had made to keep the pleats in place...

Finally it looked good...

.. but I had to redo the front pleats once too.

And I know a standard hakama has five pleats on the front... although, as I mentioned earlier, I was very short on fabric (yay for free leftover fabric) so I didn't make them as wide as normally so I just had place to make two pleats. Besides Ichito's hakama doesn't show any pleats at all and even if he had five those would be covered by the 'flap'...

I can see no pleats trololo, just looks like big puffy pants with hakama side openings to me. xD

Next step was to sew together the side seams. Dinner was ready but I decided to sew the sides together before I went to eat. Noticed afterwards it was a bad decision because in that hurry I made an epic fail and after turning the hakama every way possible I noticed I had sewn the wrong side seams together... needless to say there was no way to get into the thing... except the side openings or the leg holes. OTL

Oops. I'm so not gonna squeeze into that. lol

So I had to unstitch the fail side seams on both sides and do it again.. but this time make sure to attach the right ones together...

Ah, that's better ~

Then I just sewed the whole "inside/crotch seam" and then I went and pinned the thing, that now resembles some kind of mini hakama, to my t-shirt.

Side shot

Front-ish shot

Back-ish shot

And that's what I got done today. I still need to cut out the ties, gather the fabric a bit below the knees so it poofs and sew some kind of 'tubes' to it so it keeps in place and so that I can easily wrap those wrappings over it... oh, and yes, I think I'm gonna skip the koshiita (back board), it won't be seen anyway because Ichito's hitatare-ish jacket and 'back flap' will cover my ass anyway. trololo Lazy man, lazy excuses.

PS. Did anyone notice how much my camera distorted the colors? OTL The last pic is the one closest to the real color.

Byeee ~

Ichito's 'flap' pt.4

 Hi guys!

Finally some progress on my Ichito cosplay... it has been 2 weeks before last time I sewed on it. Gah, did I mention I'm starting to feel the Desu-panic?

Oh well... the 'flap'. Last time I worked on it I screwed up and had to unstitch the lining. This time it went way better because I started sewing the two pieces together from a different spot than before, so I avoided the whole "oh shit the side seams doesn't match!!1" crap.
So first off I started at one of the side seams and sewed down one side of the 'flap'.

I am seewiiing, I am seewiiiiiing, mooore cosplaaaaysss, to the coooons~

And after that I repeated the process but from the other side. Then I sewed the sides of the 'back flap' too, although I left the bottom parts of both front and back 'flaps' open and the whole upper part.

Turned it right side out...

Eeew it's so... bumpy and just not flat and pretty. The sides of the 'flap' wanted to turn backwards all the time... so it was time to pick up the straightening iron...

After some ironing it looks better..

Lining

When I tried to iron the side seams, which by the way are narrow and upside down V-formed, the lining kept wrinkling itself. Bah. Mom came to the rescue and cut some small slits on the curved egdes of the lining and helped me iron those tricky parts. After that I stitched around the edges so it would hold its shape and not go shkfkds.

Stitched egdes (flash photo)

I did turn in the ends and close the bottom half of the 'back flap', although I have no photos of that. I have left to close the bottom of the front 'flap' and the upper part and then I need to come up with a way to keep it attached to my body; I'm not sure if the obi and the clothes under it will keep it in place by itself...

That's all for today, bye!

Fabrics for Ichito

 Hi all.

I'm bored right now and mom was watching icehockey recently and today she doesn't really feel like helping me finish that 'flap' thingy -with its lining problems- so I went and checked what leftover fabrics we had in our 'clothing room' more like sewing supply room lol instead because I'm in a cosplay progress mood. I tried to search for that light gray fabric that I used for my hakamas when making my Byakuya cosplay from Inu Yasha year 2010. Yes, my first cosplay. I had a faint memory we had scrap pieces of that fabric left but it seems we did not.. crap, I could have used some for Ichito's eyepatch thingies. That fabric isn't finito though, the bolt is in the storage if I'm not mistaken.
Oh well, instead I found a dark blue fabric that could work for Ichito's kimono. Although it's a bit darker and lacks a violet-ish touch to it -as I would prefer- I still think I will use it.. but mom said this piece probably isn't big enough for the kimono so I have to pay a visit to Eurokangas (where we bought it 2010 too, also originally used for Byakuya cosplay's haori) and check if they have it left. I also found a piece of dark brown kinda stretchy fabric that mom said is one of the many fabrics that's left from her own fabric store. She said it's used for pants and it would work for Ichito's hakama-ish pants. She thinks there's enough fabric and I hope she's right, save money hohoho. I think this piece is all that is left from that fabric bolt, she probably sold the rest years ago so if this isn't enough we need to go buy something else...

Lastly a picture of the fabrics:

(flash photo)

I love how cameras never show the actual colors... both are darker in real life.
Oh, and I noticed I only have a month on me to finish my Desucon cosplays. Shiet, need to start working for real now!

Bye!