Repairing Ukitake's captain coat a decade later

 Hello everyone!

 

I already promised on my last post that the next one I'd write would be some yapping about the captain's haori, aka coat, repairs. :'D So for those who don't know Ukitake is my fourth cosplay (fifth in order if we count the first version of my OC Yuuto, which was a closet cosplay back then) and I originally made this costume way back in 2011. I wore Ukitake extensively to most cons I attended during my early congoing days in 2011-2012 so yeah, this costume has seen its fair share of life lol. But of course with so many outings also came accidents – the most notable of which happened during Finncon-Animecon 2011, which was my second time wearing Ukitake out after his debut at Uppcon in 2011.

I remember it so well – I had put on the full costume at the hotel on the morning and was walking towards the con area, it was a rainy day and I had with me an umbrella and didn't think much more of it at the time. I used the umbrella of course to shield myself from the rain but what I failed to consider was that it had rained so much so that the rain and dirt water was pooling up on the streets... and well, walking around with zori-style sandals made me unknowingly fling up all that shitty water into the back of my costume with each and every step I took. I remember when I finally arrived at the con area and people were looking at me and my awful condition (yes, it was very anxiety-inducing); I was aware of the disaster and extent of damage my cosplay had taken and while my memories are kinda blurry of what happened after I do clearly remember a Rukia cosplayer appearing out of nowhere and patiently helping me get off the worst of the dirt by blotting wet paper towels etc while I was quite literally having a meltdown crying. I was so shaken and upset with myself and I felt massive guilt over ruining my nicest costume. Some of the stains were so bad they were impossible to get off and I just had to wear it as-is for the rest of the convention day. To this day I still don't understand how I managed to keep myself together as well as I did and how I managed to even have fun despite how visible the damage was. Knowing myself I just know that had something similar happened in this day and age I would have immediately gone back to the hotel to change out of cosplay and my day would have definitely been 100% ruined lol – back then the hype and excitement to cosplay beat anything life threw at you. I kinda miss that resilience and drive, those starting years were different.

When I got back home from Finncon-Animecon I threw the coat into the washing machine. Should maybe mention here that I never prewash fabrics because most costumes feel too detailed and intricate to wash safely after completed so you just air them out. And I couldn't be arsed anyway because I just wanted to get to sewing lol.
Well, except this was the one time I maybe should have prewashed. You see, what happened was that the outer fabric, aka the white bridal fabric, shrunk a lot while the inner red satin lining didn't. This screwed up how the coat looked because the red lining was now constantly showing up on the sleeve edges, looking "rolled over" and the hem was raised with the red lining peeking out when worn too. It really didn't look good but yet I wore Ukitake out a few times more even after that in my defense I didn't have many other costumes back then.
I stopped wearing Ukitake after one last outing at a tiny anime event in 2013. I had grown too unhappy and self-aware of how the coat looked and it felt like an impossibly daunting task to even try to fix at the time. And I guess I had some kind of mental barrier blocking me from even trying because I was blaming and tormenting myself so much for not preventing it by taking a taxi to the destination or changing into cosplay once at the con etc. Hindsight is a curse and although I know I had valid reasons for not doing said prevention measures (I couldn't afford a taxi and my anxiety ruled out using changing rooms) it was hard to get the self-blame to dissipate. I had ruined my proudest creation and that was an insurmountable obstacle to sit with.

Time flew by. I cosplayed other characters, got into other fandoms and so on. Yet over the last few years I've felt this increasing urge of wanting to revisit and rewear my older costumes for many different reasons. And then one day it hit me that I actually missed cosplaying Ukitake, said costume used to be so defining and important to me. I remembered exactly why I hadn't worn it but time had dulled my memory of how bad the damage actually was and so I pulled it out of my ancient cosplay box in the storage room to take a closer look. The lining shrinkage issue was just as bad as I remembered but there were also prominent large water stains along the hem, discoloration and a lot of yellowing along the collar, makeup stains etc. It looked even worse than I remembered, in fact. Yet at this point I thought "fuck it" and threw it into the washing machine for another loop with a generous scoop of baking soda this time, 14 years after the first wash. I wasn't even sure if it would do a difference after all this time or if all the crap had permanently set in but I thought that since the fabric had already shrunk it couldn't get a lot worse at this point. #yolo

Coat's a bit big so it takes up the whole drying rack lol.

I let the coat dry for a few days while praying to a various assortment of cosplay gods to give me their blessings. I was quite nervous because if I couldn't get those water damage and other stains out I would have no choice but to remake the whole thing and I wasn't quite at peace with that idea. Especially since that perfect bridal fabric I used is long gone from mom's attic so I would have to settle for a fabric that likely wouldn't look valuable enough to fit a Bleach captain's status.

Thankfully the second round in the washing machine actually made a bit of a difference. The massive water stain outlines disappeared and the yellowing got slightly improved, it was still there but it got a bit lighter at least. So I guess I could say it made it better at least, not worse.
Once the coat was completely dry I took it to mom's so I had access to better surfaces to work on and a sewing machine.

Just showing how bad the lining issue was. 

The photo above is to show how much of the lining was constantly overextending, that amount of red that you see was how much was always visible, even when the sleeve was relaxed and I didn't try to pull or tug it in any way. It constantly looked like it was rolled up and bunching uncontrollably, it was legit awful. Before the uneven shrinkage issue happened the red lining didn't show at all and was like a lining should be, aka only visible on the inside.

I started the whole reparation process by taking out the seam-ripper and undoing the seams on the sleeve ends. I know, I could have just made it easy for myself and save time by cutting it off with scissors but I was too concerned about how much losing those couple centimeters of fabric (especially the white one) would affect later on when I reassemble the lining. I didn't really want to shorten it because it would look wonky if the shihakusho black and white kimono sleeves were a lot longer than the captain's coat sleeves were. Every centimeter was precious lol.

This took ages but at least the ripper was ergonomically shaped.

Once I was done undoing the seam I just stared at the lining unraveling before my eyes. I was also quite surprised that I hadn't done any kind of fraying prevention measures on the lining fabric, it was just raw edges all over and that made me uneasy and judgmental of my former self lol. Nowadays I just couldn't, I'm very anal about zigzaging all edges even if they technically couldn't unravel. It just bugs me so much to leave something undone.

Notice how much longer the lining is, oh god!

On the photo above you can see how much the white fabric had shrunk compared to the lining because the inner and outer sleeves were aligned at the corner in this photo. This amount of excess explains why it looked so bunched up and just wouldn't behave no matter how much you tried to force it to stay down.

Another thing I was baffled by was that back then I hadn't even treated the edges of the white fabric?! I had just folded them in and been like "this is fine" all because the lining would hide them from view lmao. It feels weirdly surreal because I used to have this pure mental image that this cosplay was done so carefully and I had zero memories of skipping any corners so yeah, taking seams apart and finding raw edges staring back at me was a real 'what the duck' moment. :'D

Zigzaging all the edges reeeee–

I had some struggles with deciding on how to reassemble the sleeve mouths. Originally they were done in what I'd like to call the "default lining" way aka what happens when you attach the lining to the outer fabric's edges and then turn it over, press it down and do a decorative stitch around on top to make it crisp. So basically it wasn't folded or hemmed and looked like on official character references. I originally wanted to replicate this but figured that it would be a lot of extra steps because I'd either have to remove and reattach the whole lining (which would also mean trimming the excess down before refitting which would have been a lot of extra work) or do some fidgety precision folding techniques by folding both the outer fabric and the lining separately and then have them line up perfectly against each other and stitch them down and hope they don't shift while doing so, which would surely have been an exercise in carefulness and frustration. I figured that the easiest and most doable approach was to fold in the excess lining fabric enough times to make it have the same length as the white fabric (I didn't cut off any fabric, just folded it inside) and then fold the white fabric on top to seal the red fabric underneath it. It's a bit hard to explain but I hope that makes sense? xD

Ended up doing this approach to finalize the sleeves.

I worked on both the hem and the sleeves simultaneously but I decided to post the sleeve progress first to make it easier to follow. But yeah, I did a similar approach when opening up the hem, meaning I first undid the stitches to free the two fabrics from each other.

Ripping up the hem in progress.

The hem came with the additional problem of realizing that of course the lining fabric was larger in all directions than the white fabric that had shrunk. Ideally this meant that, for a perfect result, I should have removed the whole lining, trimmed it down and then reattached it but this would have meant that I would have needed to remove the whole collar as well because the collar attached to the lining on both sides on the front. I wasn't quite up to this task and so I stood there facing the issue that, due to the collar being attached to the lining and thus locking me from handling it from all directions, that if I didn't remove the collar I would have to be creative about how and where to cram and hide the excess lining. There were a lot of back-and-forthing at this point on whether I should make a strategic cut to avoid the otherwise forced wrinkling of excess lining at the corners but I eventually decided against it and just made a vertical fold in the lining, near the ends of the collars, to hide the worst excess bunching and then I folded in the rest at the hem in a similar way as I did on the sleeves.

Lining excess hiding aka sneaky folding in progress.

Of course it wouldn't end up flawless because I didn't do it in the most time-consuming way (aka remove the whole lining etc) but I feel like this approach worked surprisingly well while also sparing my sanity lol.

It was a bit of a risky choice but to secure and attach the newly folded and prepared hem I had to sew on the upside of the coat and that's because I noticed on my first try, when I tried to sew on the underside (to see that the needle hits where it should), that despite measuring and retracing the former stitch lines I still ended up having the stitch not aligning with the original stitch on the upside and this was a problem because the white thread was really visible if it crossed over one of those black salmiakki details. So yeah, I had to sew on the upside to make sure that the new stitch aligned with the old one (it looked fugly when it didn't, trust me bro) and just crossed my fingers that the stitch went correctly on the underside and secured the hem. Luckily it did after a few minor corrections.

This was a nervous moment lol.

After that I was finally done repairing this part of my Ukitake cosplay. It's such a relief because yeah, despite the coat having been neglected for over a decade it wasn't beyond saving. I proved to myself that I could do it despite how daunting it seemed. I also got it done in time for Kummacon where I also had a quick mini photoshoot and yes, it was such a blast to be Ukitake again! I really need to repair his twin swords next and although that's probably an equally ennerving project to tackle, if not more, I now feel more confident to try my best!

Thanks for reading! Have you ever repaired a cosplay after an accident, did it work out?
~ Shiro Samurai out.

Mini photoshoot: Captain Ukitake returns!

 Hello there~

As mentioned in my Kummacon summary I had a small-scale photoshoot of my good old Ukitake cosplay that I've finally repaired since the last outing in 2013. Or well, partially repaired because I have yet to fix the Sogyo no Kotowari twin swords.

For those who don't know this costume's history it's actually my fourth cosplay that I made (out of 50+ characters to date, including different versions) so yeah, it's definitely old by now. Yet I'm still quite proud of it. This was an ambitious cosplay back then to make but it was so worth it because the memories I've made with this costume at cons have been defining for me in so many ways. I have a deeply personal connection to this particular character and, although I might not be up to date on the Bleach series, Ukitake will always have a special place in my heart; cosplaying him has always carried with it a certain feeling that I can't quite put into words – he's more than just a character to me. And getting to wear this cosplay out and mend it after 12 years of neglect was nothing short of emotional.

Cosplayer: Shiro Samurai (Jushiro Ukitake)

Photographer: Firith

Photo editor: Shiro Samurai

I'm so happy with how these photos turned out despite how much of a struggle it was to get the natural lights to work! I only have the very barebones camera gear so we were completely at the mercy of the harsh noon sun; we had to find shade under this big spruce with hanging branches. I kept getting my wig entangled in the barbs too and had to be freed a couple times. xD

I do have Ukitake's sealed form zanpakuto somewhere but that one also needs some alterations and repair before I can use it again, hence why I have no props this time. I just went for a leisurely moment kind of vibe and carrying props around would have hindered me from doing my work tasks at the con so yeah, there was that factor too.

Oh and yeah, some people might notice that I'm wearing brown contact lenses although canonically in the manga his eyes are green. I'm well aware of the eye color discrepancies in the anime and manga (Ukitake's not the only character affected lol) and I would have preferred to use green lenses, but due to the short notice on which I decided to cosplay Ukitake I simply didn't have time to order new lenses – and I only had a brown pair already available at home, so brown it was. For my next outing as Ukitake I will get green lenses for him because I deem the manga to be the more correct one because it came first.

Thanks for viewing, next up is the repair post about the captain's coat~
Do you have a favorite character in Bleach? :D

Kummacon 2025 – Bleach and poop in the fridge

Hello nerds, furries and everyone inbetween!

Kummacon was held this past weekend during 17-18 May in Oulu, Finland. Just like the previous year the host building was Oulu's International School, which is conveniently placed in the heart of the centrum! For those not familiar with Kummacon it's a free event focused around literature, geek culture, cosplay and of course LGBTQ+ pride.

Let's get to the summary!

Kummacon poster.

Once again I had applied to be part of the work force and so had Firith, my traveling companion. My mom drove me to Kemi's bus station on Friday and there me and Firith took Onnibus together to Oulu; we would have preferred the train but there were no suitable departure times for our needs this time and so we had to take the bus. Thankfully we didn't have to carry with us a whole fucking TV and a PS5 this time so yeah, the bus ride went a bit smoother than last year. xD I didn't get stuck either because I remembered to not wear chains this time lmao. Once we got to Oulu it was moderately late and so we took a taxi to the same hotel we've been frequenting lately every time we need an overnight stay in Oulu, namely Sokos Hotel Arina.
After dumping our stuff in the hotel room we headed out to handle some errands. First we quickly checked Underground (alt lifestyle store) before it closed we also speeded through Pelimies lol and then we bought some treats from Asian Market near the railroad station. We were quite parched at this point so we grabbed takeaway bubble teas and then we did a quick return to the hotel to drink the bobas and pick up our kirppis ('flea market') items. We headed back out and dropped off our kirppis stuff at Kummacon's location so they could be put in place for the con start tomorrow. After that was done we walked all the way back to the railroad area and went to eat dinner at the Chinese restaurant on the opposite side of the road.
The funny thing is that through this whole day I kept having this insistent feeling that I've forgotten to pack something but I just couldn't place what it was. Yeah I know, I almost always have this feeling because I'm paranoid like that but now it was particularly strong. It was kind of a running joke throughout the day, in fact. xD When it became time to go sleep I realized what I had forgotten – my toothpaste. I had also realized a bit earlier that I had no spare clothes aka the t-shirt I was wearing was the only one I had with me; it was kinda the reason we went to Underground but I didn't find anything I liked enough to buy. :(
Well, we watched some National Geographic for a while and I did my pre-cosplay routines (shaved my beard, face peeling etc) before I went to sleep. As always I struggled to fall asleep but that's nothing new under the sun lol.

Saturday morning came and holy moly was I tired! My eyelids felt like a boatload of bricks, I wanted to sleep a thousand years lmao. Somehow I managed to get up I don't know how and so we headed for the hotel breakfast, which was conveniently on the same floor we had our room in. I'm surprised I didn't trip on my own feet during the walk there lol.

My Karelian pastry streak continues. #ainahimottaa

I couldn't find the tuorepuuro this time sadge ;'( but instead there was this munajuusto (lit. 'egg cheese') on the dessert table. I've honestly never seen it before and it looked fascinating enough so I took a piece of it and, well, let me just say that it was hella weird. xD It had a somewhat firm, spongy texture and it tasted quite literally like egg and cheese combined. Somehow it was both peculiarly tasty and lowkey disgusting at the same time?

After the breakfast I had perked up enough to function (it took like 5 dl of ginger shots lol) and so we went back to our room to start putting on our cosplays for the day. I was so excited to wear Ukitake again after 12 years since the last outing! I managed to get the captain's coat fixed in time for Kummacon and I'm so relieved that it was salvageable after all these years without proper care. ;_;
I don't know how we succeeded at it again but despite alotting more time for the morning preparations we still managed to end up in a rush at the end?? Like we booked our breakfast an hour earlier than Firith had originally estimated we would need lol. It's always so lovely to be wrong about how much time you need to get into cosplay. :'D Oh and I realized while doing my makeup that there was something else I had forgotten – namely my matte eyeshadow palette that I always bring with me. Needless to say I had to make do with what I had with me and thus I wasn't entirely pleased with my makeup for Ukitake but ehh, I figured it'd suffice. I mean.. I've done way worse in my first year of wearing him when I legitimately was a newbie and horseshit at makeup. xD

Bonus wtf moment: eyeshadow applicator's foam exploded open.

We arrived at the con roughly 11:30 something, meaning we had just enough time to drop off our bags at the green's backroom and then I had to go get briefed about my work tasks. I worked as what we call yleisvänkäri in Finnish, so basically a generalist volunteer doing odd small jobs like refilling the drinking water spots, emptying trash bags and helping out wherever other stations are short on hands. This basically means that I was patrolling the con area both indoors and outdoors making sure that everything was tidy and functioning. It's a relatively relaxed volunteer gig to have and suits my limited capacities at the moment.

Kummacon outdoor area.

Something I noticed quite immediately at the con was how crowded it was everywhere. I don't know if it's just me misremembering or not but it felt like there were more people around than on the previous years? It was nearly impossible to not stand in the way of someone or have someone stand in your way lol.

View just next to the entrance. Info desk at the right corner.

My first shift was just one hour, running from 12:00 to 13:00. I mainly went around filling the water tanks because they were depleting fast. The weather outside was surprisingly warm (spring arrived with a bang, it was literally near zero degrees still a few days ago) and because there were so many visitors indoors it quickly got warm there too, especially on the second floor.
I was in fact worried that picking Ukitake might have been a slight mistake in terms of the sudden onset of warm weather – I mean the costume has multiple layers and quite heavy fabrics to boot. I'm past that age of suffering unnecessarily (weather-appropriate cosplays are so important to me nowadays lol) but luckily it never got uncomfortably hot indoors. Besides, I could just quickly go and cool down outside if needed because I wasn't tied to being in any particular work station.

Once my first shift was done I met up with Firith and we headed outside to go and take some quick proof photos that we had cosplays on at the nearby park. Or well.. it was supposed to be just that buuuuuut it ballooned into a photoshoot that ate up my whole 2h break. xD We both ended up missing the guest of honor's panel because of this but oh well, classic us at this point lol.

Aaah I loved being Ukitake again..! ToT
(photographer: Firith)

I got a few more shots I'm happy with but I'll post them separately after this summary! The photo session was fun and relaxed but we had some difficulties with the sun being harsh and limiting us a lot. We tried to shoot near the rocks by the water at first but due to the bright sunlight we couldn't get any photos that had the feel we were going for and so we had to abandon that location and take the photos under a big hanging spruce – it was the only suitable place in our immediate vicinity that provided cover from the sun. :')

Once we were done we went back inside and took a speedrun through the Artist Alleys (both the one on the main floor and the one on the second floor) before I had to get ready for my second work shift of the day.

View of the start of AA, upstairs.

Also AA on the second floor, just in the middle of it.

As you can see it's quite busy. It was a bit challenging at times to browse the booths at times so you had to be a bit opportunistic and take your chances during popular programs like the cosplay competition, aka when most visitors were watching and away from free-roaming lol.

My second shift of Saturday was from 15-18 so basically the remainder of the con day. I walked around emptying trash bags, refilling more drinking water tanks (with a jug borrowed from the cafeteria lol), picking up stray trash from the ground and I also took it as my unofficial duty to grab any soda cans etc I found in random bins and collect them in one place to be recycled later by the Kummacon team because yeah, the Nordic countries (along with at least Germany afaik) have this 'pantti' or 'pant' system in place since forever so you get a small sum of money for each aluminum can or plastic bottle you recycle that has a certain mark on it. It's basically a way to encourage people to recycle because you get a bit of money back, usually like 15 cents or 1 SEK if you're in Sweden. Because Kummacon is a non-profit any monetary aid is welcome and goes towards making the next event so yeah, I thought I'd do my part while I'm checking the trashcans anyway lol.

Ukitake making sure people are hydrated. :DD

Someone with sharp eyes might notice that I'm actually wearing black slippers on the photo (and not the waraji I should be wearing to be accurate) and that's because I wanted comfortable shoes to work and roam the con in. I have learnt that I have some structural faults with my feet and have since a couple years back been intentionally wearing comfy shoes with my cosplays and only changing into the proper character shoes for photos.

One thing I also did was go and pick up trash in the immediate vicinity outside the con building, especially because a lot of people were hanging out outside and thus it was bound to get messy. I was technically not told to also clean outdoors but to me it's a no-brainer due to the reason mentioned above. I also noticed quite early that a certain trashcan near the entrance was overflowing and, while I can sigh and roll my eyes at the stupidity of forcing one's trash in when it's clearly gonna fall out, I felt like something had to be done about it. Unfortunately said trashcan required some kind of tool or lock to open and when I asked at the info desk no one was the wiser at the moment and so we just agreed on putting up a sign to redirect people to dispose of their trash indoors instead. Thankfully it worked except for one instance of someone unknown pressing their garbage through the sign, disrespecting our efforts to keep the con environment clean. That kinda grinded my gears ngl.

The Monster can on top is a mood. Everyone's a caffeine junkie lmao

I'm not gonna give anyone shade for consuming energy drinks lol, I do too. And it's kinda funny in a way but I've noticed a trend in the green rooms of cons – everything from breads to fruits and juices and even cookies deplete rather slowly but the moment energy drinks or anything with caffeine becomes available that's gonna be gone in a matter of a couple hours at best lmao. I swear it's part of con culture at this point that no one functions properly without obscene amounts of pärr pärr. Is everyone compensating for their burnouts, dysfunctional sleep patterns and neurospicy struggles? xD *raises hand*

I took the risk.. and it didn't blow up. :'D

Once my shift ended at 18:00 I went to meet up with Firith and then we walked back to the hotel. The weather was still nice and breezy when we walked and a weird pikkuernu throwback hit me – it's been ages since I last walked across a town in full cosplay! I used to travel in full cosplay gear a lot when younger, be it in trains or buses or walking several kilometers to get from my accommodation to the con every day; I frequently went to restaurants in full costume too. But I guess at some point when my anxiety got worse I started avoiding being in full cosplay at public places, like I'd change before going to eat after a con etc. There's been a few exceptions over the years (like the Kotipizza raid in Rovaniemi last year) but I realized now, while strolling through Oulu's streets, that it can still be rather fun if you just don't overthink too much. It definitely helped that there were other colorful con people also on the move at the same time so me and Firith weren't sticking out as obnoxiously. :')

Anyways, once we got back to the hotel we peeled ourselves out of our cosplays lord almighty did it feel good to go from technically four layers of clothes to just one and then I took a shower to get rid of all the makeup residues etc. I just know that had it been any warmer I wouldn't have been able to wear Ukitake for the full day.
Once we had freshed ourselves up we went out to grab some more boba, because the addiction needs to be fulfilled, and we also went to the nearby foodstore to grab a couple ciders for the Eurovision finals later in the night. We had some leftover Chinese food from the restaurant trip yesterday so we microwaved those at the hotel (thankfully there was a micro and we even got to borrow plates and utensils from the hotel's restaurant!) once we got back. I gotta admit that I'm kinda relieved no one came into the elevator at the same time as we were microing our foods because that China food smell was very stonks. xD
With full stomachs we settled down for the night and started watching the Eurovision final. It's not every day you get an anime convention and Eurovision on the same trip haha.

Norway was first out. There were so many LARP style outfits this year!

Austria was amazing, peak atmosphere. This was in my top 3 favs.

Iceland was hilariously goofy and grossly overlooked, as always. Poor Iceland. :c

BARA BADA BASTU. PERKELE!

The Käärijä versus Baby Lasagna battle was the highlight of the whole show!!

I'm so relieved that Austria won, for real. I was kinda expecting Sweden's KAJ to win based on the buzz and popularity lists but I'm very happy with this outcome as well – JJ was amazing and it was a well-deserved victory.
If there's anything I hope though it's that the battle mashup version of Cha Cha Cha and Rim Tim Tagi Dim gets officially released because that was such a godtier banger! I absolutely adore how Käärijä just tripled down on his iconic neon green look, it's epic proportions of poofy. xD #niinmuhkea

Sunday morning. I've slept like, I dunno... 3 hours at most? Yet somehow I'm more alive than I was on Saturday morning, make it make sense lol. Anyways, it was time for breakfast once again more Karelian pastries om nom and then we packed all our stuff and took a taxi to Kummacon. I had no cosplay for Sunday because I didn't want to deal with all the extra hassle when we'd be traveling back home immediately after the con.

General view of the main area on the first floor.

For once we were a bit ahead of schedule upon arriving so we actually had 1 hour to explore before my work shift would start at 12:00. We decided to do a proper Artist Alley stroll because the one we did yesterday was so rushed. I ended up buying a wolf keychain I had somehow missed despite buying from the same seller an Amaterasu fridge magnet yesterday. Firith bought some adorable snake stickers from another seller downstairs.

Cryo hosted a board game and tabletop room.

There was also a room dedicated to showcasing Lego builds.

Once my shift started I strolled around the con again, doing roughly the same tasks as on Saturday. But, unlike yesterday, today I actually didn't forget to eat the warm food served to all volunteers in the green room. Yes, I completely forgot about it the day before lololol oops.
One funny thing with having access to the green room is that when you enter or just spend time there you usually won't be alone and, more often than not, there's some sort of discussion going on – sometimes said discussions are serious but other times they're silly nonsense cranked to eleven because half of us have unhinged humor and are running on fumes. I ended up partaking in some silly conversations about northern congoers versus southern congoers etc but the most hilarious moment was when I briefly entered the green room to grab something and when I was making my exit I hear two words that made my brain functions come to a screeching halt – "kakkaa jääkaapissa". For those not understanding Finnish that translates to "[there's] poop in the fridge". I turned around and asked what the heck the context was and it turns out that, at some point, this random box with something dark brown and irregularly shaped appeared in the fridge and there was apparently no signs on it of what it was or for who. No one had taken a closer look nor asked around to clear up the confusion and thus the mysterious 'shit in the fridge' was born. xD I asked why not inspect it and then these other two volunteer workers pulled the box out of the fridge and after staring at the lump for some seconds we came to the conclusion that it was two rather thick seemingly homebaked chocolate chip cookies that had gotten stuck together lmao!

Kummacon cafeteria. Possibly where the "poop cookies" came from. :'D

My first shift conveniently ended at 14:00, meaning I had a break just when Firith's classic book talk was. I figured I could go listen because I didn't have anything else to do and two of the books mentioned might have been my suggestions in the first place lol.

Walking through the corridors where most panel rooms were.

Know thy classics! Yes, I've read that one in school.

There were a decent amount of listeners so I wasn't just pity filler and everything went well. Finished a tiny bit ahead of time but that's not uncommon. After the book talk was over I took some creative liberties and doodled a hattivatti (aka hattifattener in English, from Moomin) on the whiteboard just for shits and giggles. I intentionally made it a bit cross-eyed for extra lulz. A hilarious sidenote is that I was completely unaware that the program after Firith's book talk was actually a panel about the Moomins and the sea, meaning that I had unknowingly drawn a relevant character on the whiteboard that ended up being sneakily featured on Kummacon's instagram stories. XD I lowkey wish I would have participated in that panel just to know if there were any funny reactions lmao.

Hattivatti was here.

My second work shift started at 15:00 and this last shift was pretty slow-moving because there weren't many hours of con time left. You could tell some people had already left because there was no need to fill the water tanks as often and besides, Sundays are always less busy than Saturdays anyway.

At some point when I was heading outdoors to get some fresh air I saw a cosplayer in front of me whose outfit looked weirdly familiar. I stopped him and asked if he was perchance cosplaying Scar from Wuthering Waves, an action RPG game I've lately been getting more invested in. The way he bounced up in the air with excitement was too precious! He told me that no one before me had recognized who he was dressed up as (not said to his face at least) and that he was worried that no one knew the character because WuWa isn't as well-known as the Hoyoverse games. We ended up bonding over a lot of relatable anecdotes like both of us sucking majorly at math and missing the good old times when people interacted more with cosplayers at conventions. He also revealed himself to be a total Scar fanboy and honestly it made me so happy that there's still people out there who are so wholeheartedly indulging in their important fandoms no matter how cringe it might seem to others. Never stop being passionate about what brings your geeky heart joy!

Miocosplay_ as Scar, the antagonist from Wuthering Waves.

I was so excited to see Wuthering Waves cosplays in real life for the first time – up until Kummacon I hadn't seen anyone except for a Shorekeeper briefly on Saturday (I wasn't 100% sure because it was very crowded and I was busy working so couldn't go look for them). I just got like the biggest motivation boost to get Calzone Calcharo started for next year, I've been entertaining the thought ever since I started playing WuWa and pulled him on the novice banner – dude's the reason I kept playing because his character design and combat moves were so damn cool. I powered through the first story chapters despite them being outright poor but yeah, once Scar showed up I started getting seriously interested. Currently it's one of my favorite games so yeah, this encounter was such a blast for me too!

There was a video game room. So nice with the retro options!

At some point during the con I found the video game room in the far end of the corridor and I happened to come by it just when the Super Nintendo was available. I checked through the games but couldn't find any of my childhood favorites – there were Lemmings (which I had) but that game takes too long when you have limited free time and so I played a few stages of Donkey Kong Country instead. I still keep misjudging the attack roll frames and distances and die in noobish ways lol.

My shift ended at 17:00 and so did Firith's; the con closed at 18:00 officially but our train would leave at that time so we had to depart a bit earlier to make it. As soon as we were free we went to reclaim our unsold kirppis items and then we grabbed all our belongings from the back of the green room and headed out.

Blåhaj is the true main organizer.

Due to how much luggage we had we took a taxi to the train station to make life easier. The train arrived on time and the journey home went smoothly. In fact the whole con went rather smoothly from my point of view. Of course there's always some small hiccups here and there because we're all human but as far as I'm concerned nothing catastrophic happened and the days flowed well? I did enjoy my time and I'm happy with my work effort, although I had some struggles with lower back pain during Saturday which made me need to sit down every now and then to limit the pain temporarily.

It's fulfilling to be a part of this little event that strives to build community and a sanctuary for all of those who are more or less shunned by the rest of society like the nerds, the queers, the neurodivergents, the daydreamers, the adults who nurture their inner children and basically anyone who struggles to find acceptance in the outside world. Stifling norms and expectations aren't norms at Kummacon – here it's possible to unmask and breathe a bit easier as our truest selves. This is a space where we can come together and own our unique weirdnesses safely.

I hope Kummacon won't disappear from the list of annually occuring events. My greatest appreciations go out to all the organizers for the hard work they put in – I've seen how challenging and exhausting it can be to make it all come together. Not all heroes wear capes~

Bonus pic of my AA purchases. I have a theme. x)

I think that's all I had to say about this year's Kummacon journey. Next up will be the Ukitake mini photoshoot I promised!
~ Shiro Samurai out.

Kummacon 2025 cosplans!

 Hello geeks!

 

Kummacon is inching closer and I'm not gonna lie, I've had tons of trouble coming up with who to cosplay. It's almost funny because I've had this "preliminary cosplay plans" list on my phone since the end of last year and I've already lost count of how many times I've changed it. :'D

But anyways, I've been running through my possible options for a while now and I think I've decided. You see, during these past couple years I've had this scratch to slowly repair and rewear some of my older costumes – nostalgy is quite a formidable force and, to motivate me further, I actually lack proper photos of most of my old cosplays. Now I haven't kept up with this particular series in years (shame on me, I know!) but I harbor massive nostalgy towards it and especially to this one character who ended up becoming my signature cosplay back in the days.

Character: Jushiro Ukitake
Series: Bleach

Yes, of course I'm talking about namusetä Ukitake from Bleach! I'll admit to being quite excited to bring Ukitake back, it's been roughly 12 years since I last wore him! Sure doesn't feel like it. I'll be repairing the damage done to the captain's haori soon but I won't be fixing the twin swords for this outing; they would just be in the way because I will be volunteer working at the con and thus can't have my hands occupied. Sallukka was the greatest cosplay savior friend and helped me revive the old wig (which had been neglected for years due to my non-existant wig handling skills back then), thank yooou! ;o;
I haven't fully decided yet if I will do the standard version or the Turn back the Pendulum version in which his outfit is the same, except for that he wears his hair in a low ponytail. I'm leaning towards the latter to keep the wig easier to manage as I will in all likelihood be moving around a lot. 

I have so many fond memories of cosplaying Ukitake and although the convention culture has changed drastically since 2011 I still try to hold on to that sense of community and fandom joy. I really need to get back into Bleach and catch up so yeah, please no spoilers lmao because I'm very far behind in the story. xD

I think that's all I have to say for now, stay nerdy out there~

Kisuke Urahara cosplay WIP

 Hello frens!

I finally got around to compile the work in progress post of how I made my Urahara cosplay from Bleach, you know, the sus shopkeeper with the funny hat. Although I gotta say I didn't take very many photos of the process, partly because I forgot and partly because this was a last-minute rush project. We all know how real the con crunch can be so please cut me some slack lol.

 

Oh, and all the photos are taken with my phone's not-so-good camera so yeah, I'm sorry but the quality is a lot more shit than usual. I didn't have my SLR camera with me at any point while I was working on this cosplay, so no can do. Bad photos are still better than no photos and thus no WIP post, right?

Anyways, let's go!

Kisuke Urahara reference.

 

Okay so, this cosplay materialized in a very short amount of time. I had to finish it no later than one and a half week before Nekocon as that was when I left home with mom and stepdad to attend my cousin's wedding in the other end of the country, which meant my cosplay came with me to Gothenburg and from there to Kuopio on our return trip. I don't like doing anything with a really stressful time frame but stress is also a good motivator to get things done.

Because of the lack of time I didn't have time to visit a fabric store. Thankfully mom used to have a fabric store many years ago and what remains from it is in her attic, so basically there's a fabric store at home whenever I visit her. So I went and pillaged the sortiment and almost immediately found a perfect green cotton fabric and a sufficient dark green polyester fabric. 

I know, Urahara's haori is most often depicted as black but mom didn't have any black fabric (unless I wanted a really porno PVC haori lmao) so I had to use something else that seemed passable. My options were dark grey, dark brown or dark green but I found dark green first and decided to roll with it because the colors went nicely together.

Fabrics, check.

I immediately spread out the fabrics on the kitchen table and started measuring and cutting out all the pieces. Urahara's outfit consists of a samue (kimono-like top and pants) set, a haori, traditional geta clogs and his signature hat. I only used a pattern for the pants, the rest I just winged because kimono are basically just rectangles sewn together.

Fabric laid out.

Pants pants pants!

All the pieces laid out plus elastic, cord and threads.

That's all the progress I did on the first day, it was quite late. The next day I used mom's serger to go through all the raw edges. I have to be kind to it as it's as old as I am and if you go too fast it will squeak a lot. Poor thing has seen a lot of use but it's such a trusty, convenient lil' machine. <3

Saumuri goes brrrr

While I was working on my cosplay mom was using the sewing machine to do some embroidery gifts for the wedding and that's when the worst thing that could happen happened – the machine died! Like it would start up but it would not sew a single stitch and just make this infernal noise instead. It was panic galore. Like please not now, we literally don't have time for this! T_T

So I had to ask Sallukka for an emergency visit to their place so I could continue on my cosplay. Mom drove me home and I packed my stuff for the wedding trip. I also frantically searched for Urahara's hat because I knew I had seen it _somewhere_ but I had no idea where as it was literal years ago. I bought it many years ago at a con just for shits and giggles and now I needed to find it for some real use.

After rummaging through all thinkable closets and storages I found it inside a large black plastic bag that smelled like yesteryear!

 

Hat and wig found, wohoo!

I also looked through my shoes and low and behold – I had the perfect pair of geta clogs that I didn't even remember having! I can't believe my luck, I was ecstatic!
Also, I somehow found a suitable wig in my wig stash and no, I have no fucking clue what I originally intended to use this wig for; it was just existing in there. xD

 

Later on that same day Sallukka came to pick me up after they finished work for the day. I sewed the haori together in my friend's comfy abode in Kemi and did some paint tests. We also watched a bit of anime and had a good time.

 

One coat of paint, freshly applied.

Same single coat but dry. Insane difference.

On the photos above you see what a world of difference it makes whether or not the fabric paint is made specifically for dark fabrics or not. This is the same brand with ordinary white on the left and "for dark fabrics" white on the right. The ordinary white is hardly even visible after it dried while the other white is super opaque! I didn't have to think twice on which one to choose.

Mom came to pick me up from Kemi after she got her sewing machine repaired. It warranted a trip to an old gentleman in Oulu with 40 years of experience repairing all kinds of sewing machines.

Back at mom's I started to prepare for painting those salmiakit rhombic patterns. I wanted to make a stencil to guarantee that the symbols would be as identical as possible and for that I needed some kind of plastic or cardboard etc as a base. Mom had no suitable scrap cardboard available but my stepdad had a big leftover roll of 'rakennusmuovi' (builders plastic, construction plastic?) that he used while building the house they live in. It turned out to be just what I needed!

I made my stencil out of this plastic roll.

Stencil design measured and sketched.

I wanted to paint by hand with a pencil so I didn't do the usual stencil approach and instead used the cut-out shape as a measure, drawing along the outlines with tailor's chalk. 

It was quite a nightmare to figure out how many symbols I could do while having the space between each one as identical as possible throughout the whole width of the garment. I almost had a meltdown fr, it was so frustrating because it would never line up just right, no matter how logically you tried to measure and calculate beforehand and then you had to redo and redo and redo and yeah, I just wanted to cry lol.

This was my "spacing them out" approach. It was pain.

Finally got it to be as symmetrical as possible!

One coat of paint later.

The fabric paint was so good that I only had to do two layers to have an opaque, covering result. And this is on synthetic fabric, which I found extra impressive as the paint didn't even specify that it would work on synthetics – only naturals like cotton and silk etc.

Sealing the paint.

I let my paint job dry overnight and then heat-sealed it the usual way. I personally use baking paper for protection when sealing fabric paint on synthetics because the recommended heat-setting is usually "cotton strength" (aka three dots or max heat) but synthetics rarely can withstand that high heat without taking damage. Using baking paper as a barrier also protects the iron itself so it's a win-win in my book.

After that was done I went to try on the haori in the mirror. I noticed quite soon that my sleeves looked dumb as hell because I had apparently had a brainfart when I had sewn them and yeah, I had hemmed the edges the opposite way from how I usually do and I had completely forgot to factor in that the sleeve mouths are quite wide and so the fugliness of my flappy flap flap seam was very visible!

Fix that awkward mistake!

 

On the photo above you can see what I meant by hemming the opposite way of how I usually do. The left sleeve (which I'm correcting/sewing on the pic) is how I usually hem everything and the sleeve laid out to the right is the epic fail brainfart deluxe sew-it-together-in-the-middle-of-the-night abomination that knows no bounds nor decency.

After that hotfix my haori was done, this time for real. Now what was left to do was to sew together the samue. I didn't take any photos because it was really simple and basic stuff. The only thing I did that's worth mentioning is that I took some liberties with leaving slight openings at the armpits, this to make attaching a straight sleeve to a straight body of fabric as easy as possible and, secondly, to make the cosplay a bit more breezy – aka less sweaty to wear. I did the exact same approach while attaching the sleeves to the haori too. I figured it won't really be that obvious unless I lift my arms a lot and well, it's not like Tite Kubo followed many traditional kimono rules when he designed the outfits for the characters anyway so it's not like I'm comitting any terrible kitsuke police offenses here either by just making cosplay life a bit more comfortable for myself – by deviating from references ever so slightly.

Sleeve opening shenanigans.

 

I had originally cut out the okumi panel (the front "add-on panel") for the samue to get extra width in the front for overlap, but upon closer scrutiny I noticed that the okumi seam is completely absent on reference arts and well, Urahara wears his samue rather sloppily anyway and it only narrowly overlaps in the front so yeah, I decided to leave it out as I determined that the extra width wasn't needed after a test wear.

To add the little cords (the ribbon tie) keeping his top closed I just put the almost finished garment on my body, looked in the mirror to figure out the approximate placement, marked with pins and then sewed them on. Of course I acupunctured myself with the pins too.

The pants were super easy to do, just basic 3/4 length trousers with an elastic waist. I used a basic loose-fitting pattern mom had already cut out from a sewing magazine earlier and modified the pant legs a bit shorter and added extra length on top to make the channel for the elastic to reside in.

Measuring and readying the waist for elastic insertion.

And with that my rushed cosplay was finished. 8D Considering how ass-on-fire this whole project was it turned out pretty okay – luckily Urahara is not a very complicated costume to make so yeah, the risk of absolute unhinged disaster was low. I'm still happy I got it done on time as the cosplay turned out to be comfy and fun to wear and yes, breezy too. 

For photos of the completed cosplay check out this mini photoshoot I did during Nekocon. ^_^

Thanks for reading, stay crafty you nerds!

~ Shiro Samurai