Samurai Deeper Kyo's Hotaru cosplay progress part.3

Hi guys!

This here is the third part of my SDK Hotaru progress posts – for the previous parts click here for the first one and here for the second!

Okay so, after I had painted and set the design on the sleeves it was time to actually start sewing the pieces of the white kimono. I zigzaged around all the edges at school and then, for once, I took my project with me during a visit to mom's and I of course took the opportunity to sew while there because, eff yeah, high-tech sewing machine and not some old crap!

I again started by sewing the backseam and then attaching the sleeves. Before sewing on the sleeves though I decided to pre-hem a bit of the end that would be the arm opening, for a nicer finished look. I ironed approximately 27 cm on each side from the center fold of the sleeves and then just straight stitched it down and ironed it again.

I apologize for the crummy cellphone-quality photos ahead; I didn't have my SLR camera with me in school/at mom's during most of this project. Most photos show the colors inaccurately.

Sleeve with the arm hole opening already hemmed. Notice
how the lower half is still raw. (full length of the sleeve is not visible)

After that I sewed the rest of the sleeves and finished them up. Of course when I closed in on the armpit junction I felt the rage coming. In case you've somehow missed it... I HATE SEWING ARMPITS, ESPECIALLY ON KIMONO. The reason for this is because it always ends up looking ugly as fuck, no matter how careful I am. I guess that's what you get from having straight pieces...? Oh well, whatever the reason for why it always ends up bumpy this time it was no different...

I hate you. All of you. 8C

Oh well, I was frustrated so I just started ripping up the armpit and meanwhile I was doing just that the solution suddenly came to me – why don't you leave some centimeters of the back of the sleeves open? That way you'd get a neat appearance, without sacrificing how the final thing will look when worn, because the very top of the sleeves (aka closest to the armpit) will rarely be seen anyway; it's not the end of the world if there's a small "airhole" there.

So I tried that and lo' and behold, it worked wonders! I then just hand-sewed the folds/hems in place (those 7 centimeters of the opening) so that they wouldn't flop around once the ironing "press" effect wears off. 

Oh well, I went to iron all the seams open and then I tried to get rid off some wrinkles that had accumulated over the weeks. This seemed like a good and nothing-can-go-wrong idea at first but nope, of course not. Why can't anything go without problems with this cosplay? ;_; I swear I've been having horrible luck with this cosplay from the start – even things that are simple to sew fuck up for one reason or another; it's really irritating. But yeah, guess what?

...

So I'm just ironing my Hotaru kimono and it's going nicely (for once), until I accidentally iron the front, while the backside fabric is wrinkled right under it and –BOOM!– the back gets some super pronounced wrinkles because I ironed over it! All because I didn't double-check that the back was straight, ugh. ._. Oh well, I thought "no probs, I can just straighten it out" and then I turned the kimono body around, the wrinkles of the backside now facing me, and started to iron... AND THE IRON DECIDES TO BE A DICK AND LEAVES SOME NASTY YELLOW DISCOLORATIONS ON MY PURE WHITE FABRIC FFFFFFUUUUU-- (╬⓪益⓪)

Okay... so I'm definitely not happy at this point because seriously, when it was for once going okay something that is out of my control (aka the iron) screws up my cosplay... and of course when the fabric is a pure white out of all possible colors. (҂⌣̀_⌣́) The worst part is that the yellow discoloration got on those now-very-pronounced wrinkle folds on the back, near the sleeve's lower attachment point...

Fuck everything.

I'm almost panicking but at the same time I'm trying to tell myself "nah, it's okay, it won't happen again" so yeah, I continue in the hopes that it was just a case of one-time-only trolling. WROOOOOOOONG~~ :DD Surprise? No?

The iron poops again and this time on a wide area on the upper half of the right front panel. URRRRGHHH!! I just wanted to ragequit for the day, but I continued so that I would at least finish hand-sewing the other sleeve's backside openings. After neating up the backside openings me and mom went on a quick drive trip to a store to buy some stain remover because holy crud, if this thanks-to-the-iron shit doesn't go I guess I can call my cosplay some sort of ruined... or at least miscolored. But hey! Thankfully the following day I returned to mom's and tried the stain remover and guess what? It did work and my hope on this cosplay was thus restored!

In progress Hotaru's main kimono hanging to dry
in my apartment, after stain removal.

The next time I worked on this cosplay was in school. I cut out the pieces for the okumi panel (yeah, I had left it on purpose so that I could check some measures before) and then, before sewing them onto the main kimono body, I cut the bottom hem straight. For some reason, no matter how identical I cut the pieces and how carefully I measure them, they're never perfectly aligned once they're sewn together. ._. It's kinda annoying that I always end up having to trim them all into the same length (the shortest piece deciding) and thus my final product always ends up a few centimeters shorter than intended. Bleh.

Before straightening the bottom hem.

After that was done I sewed on the okumi panels, after having zigzaged them, of course. I don't enjoy fraying cosplays lol.
I finished this white kimono at mom's on Saturday, 12th December. I cut out a reverse drop-shaped half on each front panel's top (before the okumi starts) to make place for the orange collar, which I then sewed on; I of course ironed on some interfacing fabric, for stiffness, on the inside of the collars before I folded it in half and sewed it on. I finished the bottom hem by folding it twice. I also ironed out some wrinkles and steam pressed the sleeves so that they wouldn't bunch around.

Collars pinned in place, ready to be sewn on.

If anyone remembers on the second progress post I mentioned that the under kimono might have too short collars and well, I tried it on together with the white kimono on top and yes, it does. :( The collars would be okay if the kimono was worn "normally", but since Hotaru wears it rather open in the front (and so it shows his shoulders a bit) it really doesn't work; the collars of the chequered under kimono end before the overlap of the white kimono so, yeah, it just doesn't look okay because you can clearly see that the collars are too short; they just suddenly end way before the white kimono's collars do.
Oh well, the same fabric that I used for the obi was still selling for only 3 € per meter so I went and bought 3 meters of it. I'm not gonna go into detail on how I made it because it's basically the same as the white kimono, except no sleeve painting. -.- I'd feel like a broken record, heh. But I'll just say at least something and post a few photos of it because yeah, no progress proof is kinda boring, right?

Sleeve is done and I'm about to start sewing down the side seam.
Notice the small opening on the very top of the sleeve; it's to avoid
the issues I keep having with the armpits being all wrinkly.

As per usual I cut out all the pieces, zigzaged them (no one in school knows how to fix the overlock, not even the teachers so yeah, no nice overlock seams on this one... ._.) and started sewing the whole thing together. I realized after I had attached the sleeves and sewn them up that I had miscalculated the measures of the attachment point so yeah, I ended up with really narrow-fitting sleeves for a kimono; it feels more like wearing a dress shirt at the armpits than a kimono, lol. When I don't fuck up the collars I fuck up something else; I really have bad luck with this cosplay. OTL I really couldn't be bothered to redo it because I would have had to redo my pre-hems on the backside of the sleeves and, well, that'd be a lot of extra work and I honestly just wanted to get this thing done as fast as possible because yeah, I was sewing it together on 25th December, aka Christmas day. It's still wearable and won't show so yeah, whatever. (u_u)

Sleeves completely done and side seams sewn closed.
Behold my narrow sleeve attachment, ugh.

I ironed and steam pressed all the seams and the sleeves for a nice finish; I really dislike how bumpy big sleeves look after you've sewn them. It bothers me too much if I don't flatten them, lol.
One thing though – always check what ironing settings you need to use for your fabric! I namely thought that my fabric was 100% cotton but, before ironing, I had a scratching in my butt that I should double-check what the fabric care instruction note that came with the fabric says. Luckily I checked it because my fabric was in reality a cotton blend so yeah, ironing it on the three dots setting would have damaged it because the recommendation was two dots. Always be careful! Burning your precious fabric sucks...

Nicely ironed sleeve.

I attached the okumi panels, cut the neck area to round it off and attached the collar. I finished with hemming the bottom.

Sewing on the collar.

I sewed this thing together in a couple hours and it feels quite good because now I wouldn't miss the movie that I wanted to watch from television later, lol. xD With the under kimono completed I'm finally done with all the sewing work for Hotaru – now I just need to finish his sword (I've started it and there'll be a post when I'm done!) and make his tengu geta. I'll also do some kind of wig test and a preview post later, so stay tuned for those as well. ;)

Finished under kimono.

Thanks for reading and see you later!

Shiro Samurai out ~

Samurai Deeper Kyo's Hotaru cosplay progress part.2

Oh hiya!

I've started working on my next cosplay – namely Hotaru from Samurai Deeper Kyo. On this here second part I'm gonna go through the making of his two kimono and the "obi" (sash). :) If you missed the first part of the progress you can read it here: part.1 progress post

I started out by making the inner kimono. It's always pictured with some kind of chequered pattern, so that's what I went for. I picked a close enough fabric from mom's attic (because eff yeah, free fabric!) that is white with dark red small chequered design all over it. I would have preferred an orange fabric but mom didn't have any... Oh well, if it starts bothering me in the future I can always just sew another one.

Hotaru, as seen in the manga.

His inner kimono rarely shows more than just the collars peeping out. I decided to make a very basic kimono pattern (even though it's not really needed since it's all just rectangles, more or less) just to have it for future projects, to save some time and headache.
I decided to make the sleeves short –like on a martial arts gi– to save fabric and make it easier to wear; they won't ever show anyway lol. So yeah, I just cut out all the pieces and started by overlocking all around the edges on everything.

I apologize for the crummy cellphone-quality photos ahead; I didn't have my SLR camera with me in school during this project. Most photos show the colors inaccurately.

This is all the patterns I needed for the (knee-length) kimono. The biggest piece
is the body panels (only half of actual length), okumi panel, collar piece
and sleeve. Note that the sleeves are budo gi style.

I then just naturally continued by sewing the pieces together, starting with the back seam and then the sleeves. I had some problems with the point where the sleeves meet the body, aka the armpits; for some reason I just can't get this area neat no matter what I do – it's the bane of my sewing existence lol. >_> Oh well. At one point I couldn't work more because I didn't have any interfacing fabric so yeah, I had to wait until I got that from mom before I could fix the collar. I decided to do the sash meanwhile so that I wouldn't waste any class time.

Fabric for the obi/sash.

Nothing to say about the making of this – I just took a long strip of fabric (the whole fabric bolt width) that was approximately 15 cm wide, folded it in half and sewed it shut after zigzaging around the edges. Oh and yeah, I had been to the fabric store earlier and I had found this perfect orange chequered fabric and guess what? >u< The best part was that it was on a permanent sale for only a puny 3 € per meter, zomfg!!
I had not seen it before in the store Eurokangas, y u hide stuff from me? but I obviously bought it for the obi on the same go when I went to fetch white cotton twill for Hotaru's main kimono there anyway. I was wondering if I shouldn't buy the orange fabric for his under kimono too (because it's so cheap) and make another one...?? I can't decide!

But yeah, back to the inner kimono. Because I started with rectangles for the body panels I had to make room for the collar so that it would fit. I cut two slits into the shoulders on the very top of the front side. I later rounded the whole collar area, using the slits as reference, so that the collar would fit nicely.

Slits cut for the collar placement.

I went to pick up some interfacing fabric and some orange fabric for Hotaru's outer kimono's collar. Of course I picked the same orange fabric that I had used for his pants on the earlier post.
But yeah, next time in class I continued to sew the inner kimono. I started by ironing on the interfacing fabric to the collar and then I sewed on the okumi panels to the front. After that I sewed on the collar and cut off the excess when I reached the end point. The raw ends of the collar I just folded inside and ironed in place so yeah, the bottom ends are not actually sewn shut.

Collar end folded inside and sewing.

Lastly I fixed the hem and then ironed all the seams open, for a nicer finish. I noticed when done that this kimono ended up shorter than I had first thought – it barely falls to my hips. This is actually not a problem because I'm just gonna tuck in the hem into the pants anyway so yeah, the less fabric there is the less bunchy, unfomfortable and ugly it will look. :'D But yeah, what I hadn't thought about was that because of the short length the collars are shorter too, which just miiiiiiiiiight be a problem. I can't tell just yet – I need to try everything on once finished to be able to judge.

After school I went to buy fabric paint in town for the Yin-Yang symbols on Hotaru's main kimono's sleeves and well, much to my lack of luck there were like all the colors except fucking orange. I mean, there were even several different shades of "light skin" colors (the pale peach-y shades) but not a single orange. Are you kiddin' me? -.- I don't know what's with this cosplay – nothing goes as I had planned it, not even the easy things that I should be able to do in my sleep go without errors! #badluckcosplay

Art from one of the "chapter pages" (163 to be precise) in the manga.
I'm assuming that this one is a fan coloration though...

I settled for buying a shade called "chestnut" which is like... err, if that's the color of chestnut then I've never seen a chestnut in my whole life lol. ._. It's a dark orange, close to the reference photo above (that's why I'm showing it) but with a very slight hint of brown. It was the only color available that was even sort of reminiscent of orange lol. It sucks to live in a small town where there's little to choose from when it comes to crafty stuff.
The thing is that because I'm doing the manga version of Hotaru the colors are inconsistent as hell – on some photos those sleeve symbols can be red, on the next bright orange and on the third a "sketchy" style filled-in gray. My personal preference is leaning towards orange so orange it is; luckily I already have some white fabric paint at home so I can lighten the orange paint, if needed.

Back at school I cut out the pieces for the white kimono using the patterns I had made earlier. I decided to make the sleeves really long since Hotaru's sleeves vary in length from panel to panel but yeah, most times they do look wide and flowy. I also wanted to have biiig sleeves because it's awesome. Period.

Flowy sleeves are flowy.

What has harder to find out though was what shape his sleeves had – on most images it was impossible to make out what the bottom shape of the sleeves were. I thought for the longest time that his sleeves narrowed down to pointy tips but yeah, I wanted to be sure so I started scrolling through the manga. After staring at countless images of Hotaru and thinking it through I decided to go for square sleeves on my cosplay of him, mainly because that's how real kimono sleeves are. I could just as well have opted for doing more fantasy-like pointy sleeves (it's not like Hotaru is the only one who took some liberties from "kimono rules"!) but nah, I'd rather do a bit more of a "what if Hotaru was a liiiiiiiiittle bit more accurate" approach. Hahah. Well... that accuracy thing gets thrown in the wall anyway because of his sword and tengu geta, but we'll get to that maybe later.

I even made a quick comparison collage!

Open in full-size to get bigger version.

Oh, and this is of course just how I personally interpret and view his sleeves on every single image I decided to use; you might view them differently and that's okay too ~

But hey, I had just enough fabric to get all the parts I needed (2 meters) with no scrap pieces left, phew! Before starting to sew anything together though I decided to paint the Yin-Yang symbols on his sleeves; I did this at home because, ironically enough, I'd have more table space for painting in my ridiculously tiny apartment than on the big shared table in the sewing class. ._. I also dislike being stuck sitting between two other strangers and having their stuff scattered around mine on the table so that I can't rotate my fabric –and move around the table– to get the best painting angles...

Yin-Yang design sketched onto the sleeves. I used those circular
objects to get perfect circles ~

Painted sleeves, booyah!

Because I didn't have a perfect fabric paint color I was constantly mixing the dark orange with white while I painted on the fabric. I always did the orange first and then took some white and blended it in before the paint had time to dry – this made the end result look more lively because it's not all just a single shade. :) I'm satisfied with the outcome. Oh, and I of course set the paint after it had dried completely by ironing on the "wrong side", 5 minutes per sleeve.

Hmmm...

I'm starting to feel like this post is getting long (no shit Sherlock!) so I'm just gonna split it once more and save the rest for a third part. ^^ I'll maybe include some wig testing on the next part so stay tuned!

Shiro Samurai out! ~

Samurai Deeper Kyo's Hotaru cosplay progress part.1

What's up everyone?

I've started working on my next cosplay – Hotaru from Samurai Deeper Kyo!
I've been wanting to cosplay him ever since I first read the manga back in mid-late 2012. He's just such an awesome character so that, even after all these years, my cosplay wants didn't fade a single bit. SDK is one of my favorite shounen mangas and I wish that more people knew and cosplayed from it...

Now that I'm back in school and I got to continue my sewing classes I decided that it was finally time to make this cosplay into reality!
To start I went to check what fabrics mom had available on the 5th September. I don't want to buy fabrics if mom has usable ones in the attic because hey, free fabrics! o/

This time I was lucky! I found all the fabrics I needed, save for white cotton for the main kimono's body. This means that the only fabric I will actually need to go buy is the white fabric – and probably some fabric paint. 

Most cosplayers that I see online cosplay Hotaru with red pants and red collars on his white kimono. Personally I always viewed these parts as some middle-ground between orange and red. I honestly think that it looks a bit boring/bland when it's all only red (even his inner shirt is red) – I wanted to have a bit more variation, aka color. Because of this I decided to use a flaming reddish orange fabric for his pants and collars and besides, on some official art these parts do have an orange touch to them.. so I don't think that I'm being horribly inaccurate either. Huhuhu ~

SDK Hotaru reference.

So yeah, I started out by making his headband. Super easy; I just took some red rib knit fabric, folded the width in half and sewed it together.

After that it was time for the inner shirt. I used red linen for it. Actually the whole cosplay I made in school, during my handicraft classes, because why the hell not?
I decided to make the shirt as a sleeveless very loose-fitting top. I wanted it to kinda "hang" in the front (because that's how I always imagined it) so we cut the front pattern's upper part into pieces and spread it out for extra width.

I apologize for the crummy cellphone-quality photos ahead; I didn't have my SLR camera with me in school during this project. Most photos show the colors reaaaaally wrong.

Shirt pattern making going on.

I first did a mock-up prototype out of some scrap fabric to check if the shirt's front worked – it did. I then cut out the front and back piece out of the linen fabric. After I had cut out the pieces I used the school's overlock machine to sew around all the edges (same purpose as zigzaging) and well, after that you don't use the overlock anymore. This is seemingly the professional/right way to do it, according to my teacher who has studied sewing in some proper school...

All the edges "zigzaged" with overlock.

Gotta love this thing, everything looks so neat!

With that done I sewed the shoulder and side seams closed, easy peasy. After that I noticed that because I had used a non-matching thread for the overlock the beige threads would show in the arm openings so, err, I had to hide that somehow. if you wonder why I simply didn't change for red overlock threads then that's because school's thread color choices are super limited... 
So yeah, I made some extra curved pieces (from my very last scrap pieces – talk about no fabric waste!) to sew onto the arm openings to hide the overlock seams. I have no idea what the proper name is for these. OTL

Sewing on the... things... whatever-they're-called.

I used the iron to get them to stay in place, aka on the shirt's inside. I put a wet rag on top of the spot that I wanted to iron and I then pinned the "flap" in place so that the seam would, after being ironed, be set on the inside. The iron I set to max heat (because linen) and then I just pressed it on the fabric and let it be still until the sizzling sound of the water/steam faded. After that was done I sewed them down at the shoulder and side seams (nowhere else, only two attachment points) so that they wouldn't flop over on the showing side and look ugly. I sewed exactly on top of the existing seams (on the right side) so that the seams holding the "curved arm pieces" would be close to invisible.

Ironed.

With that done I only had left to finish the hem and the collar. Nothing weird here – I just folded the edges in twice and sewed a straight stitch all around and then it was done.

Next up were the pants. My teacher didn't even bother to use a pattern for it, so I just scribbled some measures down and then she drew directly on the fabric and just cut the shit out. I'm not too sure how good of an idea this was because later on a lot of things ended up being different lengths; too long, too short, too narrow, not aligned etc.
Once again I started by using the overlock machine and sewing all around the edges on all pieces. Then, naturally, I sewed the crotch/butt seams. Next I put the side seams together and that's when I tried the pants on for the first time – just to notice that they barely went past my ass. It still worked but it was way too tight for comfort... and the meh part was that I had zero leftover fabric!
The pant legs were way too long – they were full length when they were supposed to only reach slightly below my knees. D: So yeah, I cut off like 30 cm from both legs and then, to get more width to the waist, I had to use the scrap fabric I had just gotten from the too-long-legs.

Pant legs shortened. (one piece spread out and put to the top)

I just cut up the side seams I had just done, to save time. I then cut the scrap pieces from the legs into triangles and sewed them to the sides of the pants.
Next up was sewing the waist; I left a gap so that I could thread the elastic ribbon through when done but oh boy did I rage on this. I basically just folded the top and sewed a straight stitch all around, leaving a hole for the elastic. Little did I know that doing this super simple task proved to be the most frustrating part of the whole pants. xD The fabric seriously was alive; it twisted and turned and made ugly bumps and folds all over and I had to pick up the seam ripper and undo the whole thing. I cursed the pants to the depths of hell lol.

Turned severed pant legs into triangles for extra width...

I had to do tacking stitches and iron the waist to get the fabric to lay still and well, it still managed to move around when sewing. Fuck you, fabric. Oh well, at least it turned out better than on my first run so I didn't rip it up again; it's still rather not-so-pretty on the inside (luckily it doesn't show on the outside) but whatever, no one's gonna see it except me so lolol.

Tacking threads on waist fold...

I hemmed the pant legs no problem and then I just ironed the seams open and my pants were done. Oh, and I had to cut off like 5 cm from each leg earlier because the front and back sides of the legs totally didn't match. >_> It was either cut the legs shorter or have the butt and crotch seams being horrrrrrrribly mismatched. By some miracle the pant legs were still, even after that forced shortening, a suitable length for Hotaru. What the heck man.

I'm not all that super pleased with the pants; I might redo them one beautiful day... if I can be bothered. But they'll suffice for now.

On the next Hotaru costume progress post I'll make both the inner and the outer kimono, the obi and possibly some of the other small details, like his ear decorations. See ya!