Souji Okita's violet yukata remade!

Hello there!

Yesterday on 1st June I biked to mom's place together with Hasakitsuki. 

Our reason, you ask? Make some cosplay progress for the very-rapidly-approaching Desucon! Go go go!

I already spoiled one of my cosplay plans earlier and that was Okita-san's violet yukata version. Remade, of course. Because my original one is so damn bad that I wouldn't wear it to a con even if I got paid for it. So yeah, I went to mom's to remake this fucker! 8D Because mom has the awesome high-tech sewing machine and I have trusting issues with the old-school one I got to borrow...

So around afternoon 15:00 or such (Finnish time) I started sewing; I had already cut out all the parts needed (except for the collar) at Jäätynyt Enkeli's home a few days prior. I did the measuring and cutting based on some French kimono tutorial as well as my own knowledge.

(note: this picture is of a woman's kimono, I'm making one for men)

I tried to make it accurate, as far as appearance is concerned, but I did cut some stuff off instead of folding it inside collars/seams and stuff because I just couldn't be bothered – for example the collar and okumi panels. The kimono police won't come and chase me with a naginata for a not 100% authentically accurate cosplay yukata anyway. Phew.
Well well, let's get on with this; at mom's the first thing I did was zigzaging around all the pieces except for the okumi panel pieces and the collar, but I hadn't even cut it out at this point because it was to be made of a different fabric.
The first part I attacked after the zigzaging was the sleeves. I went to iron them to make life a bit easier; one small fold for where your hand will come out of the sleeve and one bigger fold for the sleeve's "hanging end", so that there will be less bulk when I sew it shut later.
Oh, much later on I sewed a straight stitch on top of the small fold so that I would get a neat finish and avoid having to fold in the hand opening when I sew the rest of the sleeve shut.

Sleeve preparing – ironing.

I then left 10 centimeters of the sleeve hanging off the body panel (for men's kimono only), aka leaving the sleeves not fully attached to the body of the garment. Then I just sewed the sleeves on. Of course before this I had taken the body panels (left and right) and ironed them in the middle to get shoulder folds; this makes attaching sleeves a lot easier because kimono does not have shoulder seams. I had ironed the sleeves in the middle too to have a corresponding fold that I could easily match up with the shoulder fold to see that it was centered.

10 centimeters marked.

Sleeve attached to one body panel.

With the sleeves on I sewed the back seam shut. I also ironed it flat so that it would look better. Now the front is fully open and the other half, the back, is closed.

Back seam done.

After the back seam I just had to sew the sides shut. I started at one of the sleeves, left 27 cm for the hand opening (this measure is for a man's kimono, women have smaller openings) and then started sewing it shut. When I reached the armpit I prayed to the almighty cosplay gods that it would go well but lolnope, my wish wasn't granted; it ended up being wrinkled and fugly as usual so I had to rip up the armpit seam after I had sewn down the rest of the side. I swear, armpit seams are the bane of my existence, I never get them right. Of course the other sleeve's armpit seam had to derp as well and so I ended up hand-sewing these suckers down.

 I have no idea what I'm doing but let's hope it turns out a-ok! (handsewing)

With the sides sewn I took my okumi pieces and cut them triangle-ish. Actually you are just supposed to fold the excess of the okumi panels into the collar somehow, but I couldn't be bothered to be this accurate so I just cut it brutally into a close-enough shape. I have cheap cotton, not precious silk.

Okumi panels.

I sewed the okumi panels on and noticed soon afterwards that I HAD PUT WAY TOO MUCH SEAM ALLOWANCES EVERYWHERE. It's hilarious to the point of ridiculous because my first yukata ended up being way too narrow to wear properly –because of lack of fabric– and this remade version turned into a "size: SUMO". Needless to say I spent some time taking in all the seams (okumi included) at the very least 2 centimeters, sometimes up to 5 centimeters! And then I spent the remains of the day ripping up the first seams I made because double seams look bad. Don't we all love ripping seams?

Yeah, I actually slept over at mom's place. I need to finish this yukata before I leave or it's not gonna get done in time. On the following morning I woke up fairly early (more time to sew!) and started preparing to make the collar. I cut up 9 cm at the shoulder folds on both sides on the front to make room for the collar. At this point I also lazied out of accuracy so I just measured a straight line from the 9 cm cut to the beginning of the okumi panel and cut out a triangular part on both sides, to make room for the collar.

Upper part of the front panels. Also shows shoulder folds.

Making slits on the shoulder for the collar.

I had found a piece of white scrap fabric that was pretty much perfect for the white collar in a plastic bag in the attic; I measured around the part of my yukata where the collar would be attached and I ended up with it being approximately 180 cm. Luckily the scrap fabric piece was just below 2 meters long so I had enough!
I cut out a 14 cm wide piece (it's called seam allowances and the final collar will be folded in half), ironed it and attached interfacing fabric to the whole length. Then I just folded and ironed it in the middle and sewed it on. I trimmed the interfacing fabric excess off as well.

First, iron it smooth.

Add the interfacing fabric! Floppy collars are eew.

While I was pinning down the collars on the yukata I figured that I could fold inside the collar ends to avoid having an additional (and inaccurate) seam at the very end of it. Of course the iron was of help in keeping the fold inside. Like this:

Folded like this shows.

Folded and pinned in place.

Being sewn on.

Lastly I spent forever trying to figure out if the bottom hem of the thing was straight or not. I swear when I put effort in measuring the whole length of the yukata and trying to get it to be 140 cm long (my ideal kimono length) it kept trolling me. It's like, when I measured it carefully so that it would be 140 cm at all ends then lolnope, it was completely not straight when you lined it up. I probably tried all possible measuring methods but there was always something giving me a headache and finally I got tired of its bullshit and just folded in 1 cm everywhere and prayed that it wouldn't end up uneven as hell... and it actually turned out surprisingly okay. What the actual fuck?! :'DD And here prior to this I put so much effort in trying to straighten it out before getting fed up and opting for the most basic couldn't-care-less solution. Grah! the fabric was cut unevenly to begin with so I don't even know anymore why it didn't end up straight when I tried to measure it right... gh gh gh gh hurr durr derp.

With the bottom hemmed my yukata was basically finished and so we biked back home and I took a few photos of it. If I have time I will do a preview before Desucon but if not then you have to satisfy yourself with this finished product photo:

It's finished! And doesn't fit on my bed.

Valkoinen Samurai goes off to eat some pancakes and think about what more stuff needs to be done before the con arrives ~

Okita wig styling, fabric and quick photoshoot

Hello neh ~

With Desucon closing in I decided that I should try styling my wig for Okita ahead of time. Cosplay plans spoiler ahead! This time I wanted to do the first season version on which he still has the hairknot in the back. I'm happy that this one wig I have (I actually have three wigs for Okita currently, oops) has some additional hair pieces that you can just clip on and tie into the knot. But yeah, this is what I started with:

Wig before styling. (has been straightened)

Wig after styling.

I must say I barely have any wig styling experience to speak of (I've mostly just cut wigs shorter, once I tried spiking a wig slightly and that's about it) so it's not the cleanest wig work ever but oh well, it's not horrible either.. I guess. Then again I'm cosplaying a version of Okita on which he is more or less constantly lying in bed; sure that anime has always-perfect-hair logics but it would make sense if his hair was a bit messy on this particular version haha... seli seli
   Making that knot was a fucking bitch, by the way. It took several tries and I would have needed at least four hands at times... but with some determination I managed to do it alone. I might have to retie it sooner or later though because some of the hairs came out of the knot and just, well, hang. ._. I've already cut some like this but more will eventually appear and it's better I just retie it when that happens instead of gradually cutting all the long hairs off, haha.

With the wig done I got excited and had to try it on with the cosplay makeup and contacts – and then I put on the whole shit. And I mean shit as well in the way that I used my old soon-to-be-remade-for-Desucon violet yukata that is too short, not wide enough and everything in between. Gah. I can barely stand wearing this thing because it's so bad. xD I need to remake it soon! Yep, cosplay plans spoiler totally revealed.

I went outside with my photographer and had a quick photoshoot between 21-22 May. Yeah, basically we had a midnight shoot but hey, midnight sun to the rescue! Main reason was to show off the wig but I ended up playing with blood as well...

Taken by Hasakitsuki.

We didn't get much in the name of good-enough-to-publish photos because of random photobombing cars in the background and me being a derp and such. I ended up taking a bunch of selfies though, cuz I wanted to have face-pics because of blooooooooood ~

Actually I have a bonus story to share! After the photoshoot I was... quite freezing so to speak, so we went back inside and boiled some tea. As soon as I drank from my cup I blew a coughing fit because well, I'm a master at choking on things. Like, it's bad. This made Hasakitsuki look at me with a "not again" face and then, when I moved my hand away from my face, I noticed it was bloody. Of course, I still had blood on my face from the shoot but for a split-second it looked like I had coughed it up and Hasakitsuki screamed at me "ARE YOU SERIOUS?!". Well, I'm sorry, but I can't help choking on pretty much everything and having random not so random blood on my face...

I'm pretty sure that I will end up running around bloody at Desucon as well, but we'll see about that. Before I promise anything I should really get going with remaking this dang yukata. I've already bought some fabric for it that is very very slightly darker than the fabric I have on this first version; would have preferred lighter but it's pisshard to find, like, it's not even funny how hard it is to find a pale-ass violet. Actually I found an almost perfect shade in Eurokangas but it was a scrap piece and there wasn't enough of it... *insert sobs here* Even this fabric that I ended up buying barely had the amount that I needed so I bought everything that was left of the roll in the store haha.

Fabric, slightly color raped because of bad lights.

Mom brought some violet sewing thread rolls that I can use, along with the sewing machine.
(flash photo)

I've borrowed the old sewing machine that used to be grandpa's but we'll see if this thing obeys my commands when I start sewing. I have a bad feeling about it. Last time I tried I barely sewed 10 centimeters before it decided it was time to fuck things up and not work properly. Heh, I don't have much hope in this thing but I will try taming it at least.

Oh, and I'm currently storing my styled Okita wig on my one-and-only wig head which means that my Kondou wig, which used to have this beloved place, had to move. Needless to say I had to look for a replacement wig head and after some seconds of thinking I had a flash of genius!

Konhorse!! ... or is it Horsedou?

IMMAH HOERSSS!!1

It's beautiful. I know. xD

Valkoinen Samurai says byebye!

*slinks away into the darkness*

Remake, or not remake?

So err, earlier this week me, my mom and my twin went to Eurokangas in town to check if they had some stuff we needed. Eurokangas has a huge sale going on because they will move to another local in town and this is the last week the sale is going on.

While wandering around I spotted in those random "fabric leftover" boxes a very pale light purple fabric... and my thoughts immediately went to my sick!Okita cosplay. I think that's about the same shade of purple that I had used. I have no clue how much fabric that piece consisted of or how much it cost though. I'm wondering should I buy it and remake my Okita kimono? I'm not satisfied with the one I made to Desucon because it was so rushed and there's just so many things gone wrong with it... lining cut too short, cutting mistake ending in seams at a "not accurate" place, too short (especially annoying/embarrassing in my eyes because I do kimono kitsuke) etc. BUT. I'm not sure will I wear this version of Okita to another con (read: I have too much cosplay plans and too few cons to wear them too) even if I did a remake. While I did like wearing it -and I can imagine myself wearing a remade version- I can almost bet on that the day I make his wafuku and western versions those will take its place. Although I still want to do a sick!Okita photoshoot.

So... I'm rather perplexed, should I buy that fabric and remake it if there's enough of it and it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg or should I save that money in favor of future cosplays and just do the photoshoot with the fail!kimono I already have?

By the way, for your information that shade of purple is a bitch to find at least in my hometown and neighbor town, hence why I can't decide should I pass it up or buy it now when I got the chance to remake it.

That's all.