Shiny Mightyena cosplay ears and tail WIP!

 Hello everyone!

Years ago I quickly threw together a shiny Mightyena gijinka (aka human version) which included making a pair of ears for ease of recognizing the character. I took a few progress photos already back then but never got around to publishing a WIP post of how I made them because I wasn't happy with the ears and intended to remake them at some point. Well, that "at some point" finally arrived because I plan to rewear this cosplay at Gingacon.

So if you've ever wondered how to make simple costuming furry accessories then here's my debut experiences lol. I'm sure there's plenty of other more professional ways to do this but I tackled the project in a hurry with a "random bullshit go" mentality, just winging it from my head. :'D

2018 unpublished WIP photo of the starting materials.

So I started this project and did the first version of these ears in 2018 with some yellow fabric, a scrap piece of fake leather, some threads in matching colors, safety pins and stuffing (not pictured). I drew up a pattern of the general shape of the ears and then transferred that design onto the yellow fabric and cut it out. Mightyena has that type of long pointy ears with the inner ear being almost the same size of the outer ear.

Inner ears also cut out.

I handstitched the inner ears to the front-facing half of the ears because I didn't want to have as many holes in the leather that a sewing machine would make. That and I liked the rugged look of the handsewing, I thought it was fitting for a hyena Pokémon. In case it's not obvious each ear has a yellow front and a back side and the leather part only goes on the front.

Completed handsewing.

After that I used a sewing machine to put together the front and back sides. I left the base of each ear open so that I could turn the right side back out again and fill the ears with stuffing.

It was at this point when I realized my mistake. I had not factored in seam allowances and the concept of volume, which meant that the inner ear part ended up way too big, covering almost all of the surface when filled. Another issue was that the filling made the ears heavy and so they would droop when attached to the wig with safety pins and just wouldn't stay upright. This was a look that worked for my even older Espeon gijinka (first set of ears I made) but it didn't work at all for Mightyena.

2018 version completed ears. Eww.

And here ends the 2018 mishaps and efforts and we jump back to the current year of 2024 when I decided that this shit needs an overhaul before I dare wear it out in public again lolol. 

Okay so after digging these wonky ears out of my wardrobe my first mission was to open up the base and remove all the stuffing. Once the ears were flat they were easier to handle and so I took a seam ripper in hand and started undoing the handsewn stitches that kept the inner ear in place – after all, one of the two big mistakes was that the inner ear was way too big. Once I freed the inner ears I measured and sketched out the amount I needed to remove on the backside of the fake leather (don't want visible marks!) and then I cut it off carefully. I shaved off like 1 cm from all sides except for the base.

First steps towards an improved appearance!

I had decided that for Gingacon I wanted to add a fluffy tail to my costume for more recognizability and to have it feel more complete and less like a closet cosplay lol. It still is a closet/recycling cosplay though. *screeches*
I bought some fur fabric from Eurokangas in Oulu, it's not a perfect color but it was like the only brown option that looked passable as canine fur and didn't make me think of a bear or moose. I would have ideally wanted a darker, more cholocate brown fur but I was really short on time and the options were very limited. It sucks that the fabric store in Kemi closed down and that the Eurokangas in Tornio also disappeared already years ago.

I worked on the ears and the tail simultaneously, swapping back and forth between the two depending on where I was and what equipment I had to use. The tail is a very simple creation; I just bought a roughly 35 cm piece of fur, the width of the fabric, and then I folded that in half and cut the other end into a tapering tip while leaving the folded, now upper half to be the base of the tail.

I was convinced the 80 needle would break but it didn't??

I've never sewn fur fabric before and especially not furry fur like this. It's quite difficult to keep the hairs in check and when I was cutting the end of the tail into a tip I had loose fur flying all over the place. xD Luckily my new rehabilitation place has a hobby room and there's a sewing machine there, albeit an old Husqvarna one. I was quite distrusting of the machine because there weren't anything but 80 strength needles and the fur I had was very thick – I was sure it would break or jam while I sewed the tail shut. Yet somehow the needle didn't break during the whole odyssean ordeal and I just sat there wondering if the sewing machine was secretly an overpowered Autobot on a mission to save my day or if I had somehow cheesed the law of unfortunate setbacks. GG needle, well played.

Tail edge sewn shut.

Sewing the tail took quite a lot longer than I thought it would because I spent so much extra time trying to keep the fur hairs away from the presser foot! I mean I had to constantly be there re-arranging the direction of the fluff and trying to move away as much stray hairs as possible to not have an excessive amount get stuck in the seam. It's an impossible mission to complete perfectly but I did what I could.

Turning the tail back out. It's so fluffy.

I left a relatively large gap up on one of the sides near the top so that I could easily turn the fur side back out and later fill it with stuffing to have it actually look fluffy and not like a hairy pancake.

I left the progress of the tail for a bit and jumped back into finishing the ears. For this I paid mom a visit because I needed some additional stuffing to fill the tail (the stuffing I removed from the ears was nowhere near enough) and I also wanted to brainstorm ideas for reattaching the faux leather parts onto the ears without having to undo all the seams first, to separate the front and back pieces, because that was a lot of extra work I didn't want to do and didn't really have the time left to do either. I mean now that the ears were already assembled I couldn't exactly handsew the inner ears back on because the stitches would show on the backside and that would look fugly.

Hello vliesofix my new friend!

Mom had recently ordered this material called vliesofix from Germany for her sewing/craft projects. It behaves similarly to interfacing fabric except that it has heat-activated glue on both sides with a peelable film on the other side.

So what I did was cut out a suitable piece and put the glue side down so that it would stick to the backside of the inner ears. My vliesofix piece was slightly too small to fit both ears but this was easy to solve by just using other scrap pieces to cover the missed spot; make sure not to have the edges overlapping because that might make peeling off the film more difficult.

Preparing the vliesofix.

I used an old towel to protect the ironing board from glue. You could of course just cut the vliesofix directly into the correct shape to minimize product waste and glue residue, but as I was already working with scrap pieces I didn't bother. I also made sure to protect the fake leather by folding over the towel on top, before ironing, so that the iron wouldn't touch them directly in case of damage (the iron was on a high heat setting). If you're working with delicate fabrics, or fabrics of which heat-resistance properties you are unsure about, you might want to sandwich them between another heat-tolerant fabric like cotton.
I gotta admit though that these photos were from my second try – my first try was a major oopsie because I accidentally put the glue side facing up (it's quite difficult to tell them apart on a quick glance) and when I pulled away the towel, to reveal my work, the ears were still there but the vliesofix had stuck to the towel instead and I had to tear it off. xD I has the dumb!

Successful attachment.

I cut tiny scrap pieces into the shape I needed to fill in that one corner that didn't fit into the block. After the first glue side was fully attached I trimmed off all the excess product and then peeled off the film to reveal the second glue side. This side I would then attach to the yellow part of the ear by ironing it again. I used the towel of course for extra security although it also meant that the vliesofix took a bit longer to fully stick. Despite my efforts it didn't fully attach itself (glue wore out or evaporated or something, I dunno) so I had to use some fabric glue on a few spots to finalize the attachment of the inner ears. For once in my life fabric glue actually seemed to work. I have so many bad experiences with fabric glue being absolutely worthless crap that just created a mess.

The last part involved using wire to get the ears to have some support so that they'd stay somewhat upright. I bought some cheap steel wire from Dollarstore and layered it like six or so times, after which I bent it to a roughly matching shape and twisted it to become more united and stronger. I used two wire frames like this per ear, except the second frame was half the length of the first one (so basically one curved and one straight piece).

Example of the wire shape before insertion.

After completing the wire frames I just inserted them into each ear and then I sewed the base of the ear shut and called them done. Done for now at least. Yes, I intentionally omitted the stuffing altogether for the remake although I did briefly consider other attachment methods than the safety pins. I mean, safety pins are an inexpensive and effortless way to attach something to a wig without it being semi-permanent, although it can be a bit cumbersome to set up as you need to make sure that the ears are on roughly the same height and position etc. I did consider buying a thin headband and attaching the ears to that for an easy wearable, but I saw no suitable ones in the stores I had time to check.

With the ears completed I could focus on the tail.
I stuffed it to my liking and then came the part that I kicked myself over – I had not paid any mind to how to attach the tail to my costume in advance. Or more like I had thought about options but I hadn't foreseen that yeah, it would be a lot easier to add belt loops or whatnot if you do it before sewing the tail shut on all sides except for that one gap. -_-
I decided to add elastic bands so that I could just thread through any sashes or belts to attach the tail. The hard part was sewing said elastics onto the backside of the base of the tail without losing my sanity along the way; all the measuring was just rough eyeballing and gut feeling because there was no way to really know where the heck any correct placements were because of constant shifting lol. Having one hand inside the tail (and locked to only one entrance direction) and one hand unable to properly keep things in place, due to how thick the fur was etc, made it really challenging to handsew the elastics in place. It would have helped had I kept two openings on each side of the tail because then I would have had more control to adjust once my hand with the needle went in. So yeah, the elastics aren't perfectly aligned but whatever, they do their purpose and as they'll always be against my back no one will really be staring at them.

The final task was to handsew the gap closed.

I finished the tail by handsewing that entry point closed (secure the stuffing!) and with that my Mightyena cosplay was upgraded ja minusta tuli virallisesti turri me thinks and a bit more complete than last time. I gotta say though that the handsewing was also done completely in the blind, the long fur completely hid my stitches upon doing them and I was impossible to even see where the folded edges waiting to be closed were, I had to go by touch only and hope that my needle poked through both layers on its way. Gotta say that these experiences make me appreciate and respect the fursuit makers even more than I already did, just handling the fabric itself requires so much extra patience lol.

Finished tail, it's honestly pretty stonks!

I would have wanted to try the costume on before Gingacon to see how it looks but I don't really have time for that anymore; I haven't even found the costume parts nor started packing yet and I'm leaving on Friday, send help. I just have to trust that they function as they should.
Oh well, I will try to get some cosplay photos soon so that I can put a link here that shows how these furry accessories look when worn!

Gingacon event summary will be up next, see you soon!
~ Shiro Samurai out.

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

Dota 2 Invoker cosplay WIP part.1

What's up geeks? :D

I've decided to start on my next big cosplay project! *badum tsssh*

I don't have a set deadline yet for when I want to be finished with this costume but I'm currently aiming for summer 2017. I'm not making any promises regarding the debut con etc but I can say for sure that this cosplay is part of a cosplay group with friends!

The character I will be doing is Invoker from Dota 2.

*drum roll*

I'm pretty sure no one saw this coming and, honestly, if someone had asked me about Invoker half a year ago I'd been like "who's that?". xD I decided to do him on a whim after Närcon Vinter when me, Hitsu and Sacchan were talking about Dota 2 at Hitsu's place. I actually haven't even played the game myself but because Hitsu is a big fan of it I've seen her play and talk about it. I've always had an interest in this kind of games anyway, but because my internet is shit (and my computer is dying) I can't play it comfortably. :/ So yeah, Hitsu mentioned that she had planned to cosplay from Dota 2 and asked if I was interested; I had been wanting to do a pair cosplay with her for years since we're really close friends since school times and we have supported each other a lot during tough times etc. I thought that because she loves Dota 2 then I could join her in the fun and hey, why the hell not? :D I had no clue about the characters though, so I ended up asking Hitsu for suggestions. She first suggested Juggernaut (because of the samurai inspiration) but I didn't really like the design. :/ She then told me that she knew a character that I might like and so she showed me the Invoker and, well, I was game on! 

I don't say no to a fancy badass magician who gives me a reason to do an awesome cape and gain a fair amount of new learning experiences! Besides, his color scheme speaks to me and I get more use for my elf ears. I've always wanted to do at least one wizard cosplay – now I got one! o/

I started working on Invoker on 18th February 2016. I have sewing class in school and one of my teachers is awesome; she can draw patterns by free hand if I just show her what I want to make. So yeah, I had totally saved some reference photos on my cellphone and showed them to her and then I spent some time sketching the different clothing pieces on paper, to give her an idea of what they looked like when separated.

My sketch paper with the measures scribbled
on it by le teacher. (psst, I know that the vest is inaccurate)

 

My teacher started taking some measures and I gave my opinions on how long this and that piece should be, the shape of the sleeves and so on. Some of the body measures are inaccurate because she took them over my clothes and yeah, because it's winter I am wearing multiple layers and so suddenly my ass is 10+ cm wider than it actually is, lol. *coughsomanypantscough*
We got almost all the patterns drawn and cut out on the first day, here it starts!

I went to fetch some fabric from mom's attic on the following weekend and I ended up picking out a fabric I thought I'd never touch for cosplay purposes, even if I had a 10-feet pole and rubber gloves – are you prepared to hear it? *silence intensifies* .............................................. SATIN.

Yes, that shiny fabric that all cringeworthy cheap online costumes are made out of! :'D But before you decide to mentally roast me, fork me and throw my remains into a fucking sharknado I want to justify myself – not all satins look horrendous to the point you want to gouge your eyes out. You see, mom had a roll of this beautiful plumish violet quality satin fabric that actually looks good. Yeah, say it with me – satin that looks good. Can you believe it??

I decided to use the satin fabric for the jacket or undercoat or whatever you want to call it, of which basically the sleeves and the "tails" are visible. I honestly didn't want to go buy 4 meters of fabric when I could get 4 meters of satin fabric for free and hey, I've seen another Invoker cosplayer online who used shiny fabric for the jacket thingy too and guess what? It looked amazeballs!
So yeah, I thought why not and besides, I don't think it's that off because Invoker is a badass magician and I often imagine magicians with shiny precious-looking robes...

Some of the fabrics etc needed for Invoker.

 

Next time I had sewing class was on 1st March and I brought with me the satin fabric to school because we had prepared all the patterns for it. It turned out that our original idea wouldn't work because we had planned to do the jacket in two parts and thus of two different fabrics and it required that the top would stretch and/or have a zipper. We scratched that idea altogether and decided on a different approach, just so that we wouldn't have to redo most of the patterns. So yeah, what we did was that we decided on splitting the jacket so that the top part of the jacket would stay the same (with the sleeves), except that we would widen it enough so that I could fit it over my head, but the lower part would be the skirt thingy instead of the jacket "tails". This means that the jacket bottom, aka "tails", together with the white front flap thing and the triangular back cape would be a separate piece that attaches directly to the waist. I'm sorry if my explanations make no sense. XD

To check the fit of the widened top part of the jacket pattern, that was the now-to-be-jacket-with-skirt hybrid, I did a quick prototype of a test fabric. It fit well and so I used the prototype as a pattern when I started cutting out all the parts that were to be made of the satin fabric. Hhhhhh.

Cellphone photo of fabric cutting (yellow is the prototype).
The colors are raped, lol.

 

The prototype jacket top was really short and it was originally made short so that the "tails" would split very high up on my waist to give the right look when worn. But yeah, because the top was now to be attached with the skirt and not the "tails" I could afford to lengthen the top. No need to be croptop!Invoker. xD

During that class we cut out all the pieces needed out of the satin fabric. For next class on 3rd March I brought with me the whole bolt (yay mom's fabrics!) of a really dark purple fabric that I had planned to use for Invoker's skirt thingy. I ended up needing to take the fabric width 3 times to get enough fabric for the deep folds of the skirt – that's a lot of fabric!

School's serger. Always hella convenient!

 

I had time to go through all the cut out pieces so far with the serger and OH LORD I'VE FOUND MY NEW NEMESIS WHEN IT COMES TO SERGING – IT'S CALLED DOING CURVES!! ( >д<) It's 99% impossible to do some curves and sharp angles and having the serger actually catching and sealing the edges without the automatic cutter (that moves when you sew, in case someone is not familiar with sergers) taking a big bite from places where you really don't want it to cut. Even my teacher (who's a sewing artisan) said it's impossible to do some curves so yeah, there seemingly is no magic trick that I simply have not been told about...

I sewed the shoulder seams and the side seams closed on the top and later on I went to fetch some white cotton twill from Eurokangas for the bolero, aka the sleeveless vest thingy. I know that at mom's there is a perfect golden fabric that I could make the golden details out of (it doesn't even fray!) and I plan to go fetch it this coming weekend. At mom's there should also be a big roll of white fake leather which I'm planning to use for the cape, since I most likely will want it to be rigid and actually not fold like a normal cape. The reason for this is that in the game his cape stands up on its own and the full design of it is always visible. It should look like some really extravaganza fancy cape with its own will, lol. Fuck gravity!

Invoker reference.

 

I'm not yet sure what I'll make those shoulder armors out of but it's either gonna be the same leather as for the cape (assuming it's suitable, I haven't seen it in person yet) or worbla. I'm honestly a bit intimidated by making it out of worbla because I'm still really new and inexperienced with it and yeah, Invoker's armor would need quite some thinking and skills to get to look nice...

I have most of the fabrics ready or at least planned out. I only need to find something for the gloves (the black parts), the front flap and the white-ish waist & butt skirt thingy. I honestly have no idea what to call it. xD I also need to fetch buttons for the vest but that shouldn't be a problem seeing what a shitload mom has in a box, lol. I might need some fabric for the boots though, if I decide on making them crazy long, as they seem to be on the very first Invoker picture I posted.

Invoker reference without cape, shoulder armor and arm bracers. (and hair, lol)

 

I'm thinking about doing the golden chest armor out of worbla, golden leather (if I can find any) or polystyrene sheets, I haven't decided yet. Those decorations on the front flap I'm not sure about since I have no idea whatsoever if worbla sticks to fabric. Anyone know?
I'm planning on making the arm bracers out of worbla or gold-colored leather as well.

So yeah, I have many things planned out for Invoker but luckily this isn't a cosplay project that needs to be finished anytime soon; it's a more long-term one so I'll have plenty of time to take it slowly and think along the way. It feels good to not have a definite deadline that is all or nothing, hah.

That's all for this time. Stay tuned for the second part!

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!