New gray hakama for Yasusada and Kenshin, finally!

Hello peeps ~

After almost 2 years of searching on and off I've finally found some new gray vintage hakama that I can use for improving my battousai version Kenshin Himura (Rurouni Kenshin) and nimihirviö Yamato no Kami Yasusada (Touken Ranbu) cosplays! 8D I'm so happy I finally have a suitable hakama because I've been searching for soooo long for the right one to show up and with the right price! It's been stupidly hard to find, I tell you. -.- What's even better is that this one is made of cotton, which is more convenient for cosplay purposes because I can iron and even wash it, if needed! Most times vintage hakama are silk, meaning that cotton is hard to come by.

When I originally debuted Yasusada back in 2015 it always bothered me that the cosplay hakama that I used (same one that I've used for Kenshin and Hakuouki's Hijikata) was way too light. I always wanted a darker pair and preferably a vintage piece, to fit better with the kimono that I use for him, which is also vintage. The wrong hakama is the main reason I haven't reworn Yasusada since then, even though I've wanted to rewear him all along!

New hakama, so excited! >u<

I'm sorry for the crummy mirror photo and the yellow light but yeah, the hakama is a dark-ish gray. I also tied the hakama knot differently from Yasusada's (didn't check references) but it doesn't matter since this was just a quick test. I basically just did a proper knot instead of an "anime knot", lolol. 

It's also andon (skirt) style, which is the type that Yasusada is also wearing, according to the art book – if one wants to be precise.

Yamato no Kami Yasusada reference.

As I said I will also use this new hakama for my battousai Kenshin cosplay, which will see the light of day again once I remake his (or well, actually Ichito's) gloves, aka tekkou. They actually broke at Närcon Vinter last year. :'( I want to make sturdier ones that are easier to wear because the now dead gloves were quite a bitch because yeah, they kept warping around and undoing themselves. Then again, I made them in fucking 2012 so totally not the freshest build I've done, lmao. I should make a new pair specifically for Kenshin and then another for Ichito too...

That's all for this quick update post, see you!

Shiro Samurai out.

Falkner's mini hakama pt.2

 Guess what guys?

There's only 5 days left to finish my Falkner cosplay before Skecon. Ouch.
Decided to sew on his hakama style pants most of the day. I won't explain so much what I did because I'm lazy but I'll show some photos of the process at least. It's pretty simple.

I started with doing the pleats. Remember, this is not the authentic way to make hakama. Two back (overlap) and two in front. I'm fully aware that hakama normally have 5 pleats in the front but Falkner's hakama doesn't really look like your typical hakama... and I kinda interpret those two "folds" on the front like pleats soooo... *shrugs* Besides I need to make pleats or I'd have those humongous granny pants which I do not want. lol

Making front pleats..

... and back pleats.

I went ahead and ironed the pleats and after that I needed to cut out the last missing parts.. the ties. I used most of the last bits of the fabric I had left. I cut out 4 about 165 cm long and 7,5 cm wide strips of fabric. I would have made them wider if I wasn't so short on fabric.

 Ties cut out

Zigzaged all around and sewed them together at one end so I had 2 long ones

Ironed to get a middle fold

Sew the ties into a long "tube" so that the zigzag is folded inside...

Sew a straight seam across the pleats to secure them
(front piece on photo, of course do same to back piece)

Pin the ties in place and sew them on

At this point I was done except for heming the pant legs. I tried them on very sloppily and noticed that they were waaaaaay too long. My typical mistake. ._. Oh well, it's much easier to shorten than to lengthen..

They were supposed to end at my knees. lol

Gonna cut off some excess length next time and hem them. *yawns* I don't feel like doing anymore for today. Next time I'll finish these so that I can start working on Falkner's jacket.

Bye for now!

Falkner's mini hakama pt.1

I was bored and decided to start sewing on Falkner's hakama-ish pants to get some progress done, after all Skecon is slowly closing in; I have only 17 days left to get everything done, heuheuheuheu...

Last weekend mom helped me cut out the parts for my pants. We were lucky, the fabric we had at home was just enough for Falkner's kimono style shirt and mini hakama. Phew~

Oh, and before I start. This is not the authentic way to make hakama, just for costume purposes. The patterns are just originally these huge pant's patterns which I shortened and modified later on. The modifications I just did what my brain told me to do.

Front and back pieces cut out, two of each obviously

I started with zigzaging around all four pieces. I decided to save the blue thread so I used white thread for this.. it doesn't matter anyway because the zigzag won't be seen on the outside. After I had zigzaged all pieces I took both back pieces and started folding in at the sides to get these hakama style openings.

Impromptu folding (both back pieces)

I tried to get both of them the same size and depth. After I had got both back side opening folds like I wanted them I put away one of the back pieces, took one front piece and copied the back piece's folding over. Must try to get them as similar as possible. Repeat for the other front piece and then just iron the opening folds flat and stitch them in place.

After ironing and sewing it in place
(I folded in the edge closest to the opening so that the zigzag won't peek out)

But upon closer inspection I noticed something...

SKIPPED STITCHES. WHYYYYYYYYYYY

I tried re-threading the sewing machine at least thrice and switching the sewing needle but nope, the problem didn't go away...
I find it weird how I didn't get skipped stitches at all when I made Falkner's shirt earlier, it's the exact same fabric and I used the same needle...

I see you little troll...

I decided to screw it and sew anyway. I just want this thing done, if it bothers me in the future I can just undo the seams and remake those failed parts...

Next thing to do was to sew the outer side seams closed and after that sew the inseam/inner-pant-leg-whatever seams closed.

Outer side seams sewed, obviously one front and one back piece

Inseam sewed closed

Next thing to do was to align the crotch, right sides together of course, and then sew along the curve.

Crotch aligned, before sewing

 Now I had something that resembled pants... or not. Instead of mini hakama I now had these humongous ultra XXXL sized granny pants! I don't see anything "mini" about them right now... Aren't they sexy?

Ihan helevetin maukasta..

Errr, maybe not so...

Oh well, it's not like this sucker will stay like this forever. I have yet to pleat it, add the ties and hem the pant legs. I'll fix that another time.

This is good progress for tonight. *yawns*

Repairing vintage hakama

Konnichiwa!

Remember those dark brown vintage hakama I used for Kondou and will use this weekend for art/collector book Saitou too? Well, during the Saitou photoshoot a few days ago when I crouched down I noticed there was three holes on the hakama that would need to be repaired before Oulun Animeseminaari. One couldn't see that there was holes if I was just standing or walking slowly, but if I sat down, crouched or just did basically anything that makes hakama spread everywhere then.. yeah. Oh, and I don't mean a hole in the way that it's in the middle of the fabric or something, I mean a hole like where two fabric pieces were stitched together and the stitching holding them together is coming loose... look, my English is so wonderful, I'm not even sure what that's called, if anything. So yeah, I decided to fix my hakama in shape before the event.

But.

I went to town today and visited four sewing supply/fabric stores asking for silk thread.. no one carried it. One of the sellers at one of the shops even said "you're the first person even asking for silk thread this year". So... yeah. The fuck.

Oh well. Back home I figured I would just have to suck it up and use normal sewing thread instead, even though silk thread would have been preferred...
   At first I hesitated sewing because I wasn't sure how the hakama were sewn and well, I'd hate myself forever if I messed up any traditional Japanese clothing because I have such a deep love for them.

I thought if there was any 'quick fixes' but all the ideas I came up with where... eh... let's say barbaric. I then decided to examine the stitches on the hakama and noticed they were super simple... then I proceeded to feel stupid. OTL With a sewing needle in hand I started working ~

Started hand-sewing...

Done
(flash photo, so bad lighting in my room)

It didn't take me long time to sew shut all three holes. Now my hakama look presentable again and I can go and rock them at the event without having to feel embarrassed all day and wonder if anyone notices the holes or not. Oh, and now I can sit down too whenever my feet decide to kill me. Sweet.

Now it's time to start packing my stuff for the weekend, bye bye ~

In which I happily wore a "skirt" + Närcon closing in!

Sweet Jesus.. tomorrow evening me and my twin will start our journey down to Närcon. 20 hours of bus and train awaits us to get to the southern part of Sweden.. aka Linköping. We haven't even started to pack our stuff aghkfsgk!

Today on the morning my mom and twin went to town and because I woke up late I didn't go with them. I stayed home, hung the laundry to dry outside and then decided to do a Kondou WIP because I have everything ready, except the wig. I wanted to test my vintage brown hakama with the kimono to see if I preferred to do the anime version (dark brown hakama) or game version (dark blue hakama) after all.

Anime version of Kondou
(NOTE: I will wear the shinsengumi haori instead of his black haori)

I tried on the brown hakama first (because I already know what my kendo hakama feels like when worn. lol) and immediately declared that "Fuck yeah, brown it is!". It felt chill to not have to lift the kimono's hem into the obi like I do when I wear umanori (split-legged) hakama with full-length kimonos. For the first time in my life I friggin' loved wearing what technically was a skirt. BADAMTSSH, BLASPHEMY!
So yeah, here's some quick wigless!Kondou photos for you.. because I'm too lazy to censor my face. lol And I'm too lazy to put on tabi too.. even though Kondou doesn't even wear socks. lol Not to mention I totally forgot my swords...

Oh well, back to the other thing I needed to inform. Houston, we have a problem.
I might be more or less forced to change my Närcon cosplay plans last minute. I can't tell until tomorrow and then it'll probably going to be too stressy for me to write a blog post about whatever I finally decided to do. So the thing is, I might not get my Kondou wig on time. It was posted on Saturday and as we all know the post doesn't move on weekends and well, I'm leaving Tuesday evening and post delivery takes (at least according to the post of Finland's site) with 1st class mail one day. So if it goes out on Monday I might get it on Tuesday before I leave, if I'm lucky and the post doesn't slack. But it's gonna be very last minute as I said.. and with my crappy luck it's probably gonna be here on Wednesday when I'm already in Linköping. :'DDDD Hohohohoho.. not.

Well well, in case I don't get the wig on time (and don't have time to report it before I have to leave) I will write my Plan B here, just in case. If I don't get my wig in time for Kondou he will be postponed for debut at Tracon in Finland instead, if I can go there which I have planned and really really want. To Närcon I will then be Hajime Saitou on both Thursday and Friday instead. And now I'll go back hoping I'll get the wig before I leave, however puny the odds might feel right now, because hey - here's hoping because I want to cosplay Kondou.

Immortal spirit's ninja pants pt.4

Finished my 'ninja pants' today!

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

Ironed and ready for the sewing machine

Started sewing, folding in the edges...

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

Front pinned

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

Front sewn (back pinned)

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

Front

Side-ish

Back-ish

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

See ya!

Immortal spirit's ninja pants pt.3

Hi everyone!

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

I LIED

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

Pleating, pleating...

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

Test pinning

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

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

Take a bit in so it fits better...

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

Ties

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

Bye.

Immortal spirit's ninja pants pt.2

What's up?

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

That's all.

Immortal spirit's ninja pants pt.1

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

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

NINJA PANTS!

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

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

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

Fabric just cut out

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

Pinning openings

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

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

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

Pins are evil

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

(ignore dirty mirror)

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

Finally it looked good...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah, that's better ~

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

Side shot

Front-ish shot

Back-ish shot

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

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

Byeee ~