Masamune's coat pt.3 - Trimming it!

What's up?

I've been trimming the coat all day and my neck, back and shoulders want to selfdestruct. Now I will write about the progress while it's still fresh in my mind. Beware lots of photos.

My trim of choice was a 3 cm wide roll of bias tape we had at home. I took the widest I could find because extra width wouldn't hurt and it would more likely cover what needs to be covered better.

I decided to start trimming the upper edge of the collar. Because I'm lazy at explaining how I fold things I'll show you le poorly drawn Paint-quality picture instead. It's probably easier to understand than my explanations anyway. lol

© Valkoinen Samurai
(I have no idea why I drew faces on them.. )

And after I had done that I just put the to-be-trimmed fabric between the trim so that the fold runs at the fabric's edge. Like this:

But when I had trimmed a bit of the collar's upper edge I turned it around and...

It didn't catch! D:<

Yeah, nothing to do but to unstitch it (with mini scissors, still..) and try again. But I didn't feel like trying again with the same method so I tried Plan B instead, which looked like this:

I would sew one side at a time, starting at the inside/wrong side, and make sure the bias tape was sewn on at half its width (1,5 cm) so that when I was done with one side there wouldn't be nasty surprises.. aka not enough width at the other side. Then I would just sew the other side closed. This meant there would be two stitches at one of the sides when I'm done and that's why I started at the inside.
This technique worked better for a start (even though I had to be very careful with the measuring) and after I had trimmed one side it looked like this:

Then I just stitched the trim on the other side just like I had done. But this time I didn't need to measure, just had to make sure that I pulled on the trim as much as it would go over and stitch it in place.

I also had to make sure the stitch from the other side would be hidden by the bias tape...

When I was done I thought everything was alright. Until I took a closer inspection.

Seems okay right?

 But when I lifted the "flap" a bit... (oh why did I even sew that far from the edge anyway..?)

THAT GODDAMN STITCH IS VISIBLE. I MISSED IT BY A LOT FFFFFFUUUUUU

Time to unstitch.. again. I must say I was annoyed at this point. Unstitching sure is a bother, especially when the right equipment is missing. It takes longer with scissors and obviously you have to be careful so you don't cut the fabric accidentally...

Unstitching - Scissors style...

When I was done unstitching and decided to try again, well.. nothing happened because the sewing thread had magically escaped from the needle. What the hell.

They see me fleein', they hatin'

Okay, I was starting to get annoyed at this point. Really. What's with all these fuck-ups piling up when I have barely started? My face was like.. oh, I know.. Masamune himself can demonstrate:

Yeah, go figure. I bit my lip and continued. For some reason the trim decided to do like I wanted this time and you know what... it looked okay = Good. Next thing to do was to figure out how to get a nice change of direction on the collar trim because now I would be going downwards. I played around with folding the end in different ways and figured the basic fold (like on that poorly painted tutorial) worked the best, except that the folded trim edge I folded over to the fabric's other side and when I folded the trim lengthwise that folded edge got hidden. This photo doesn't show it clearly but at least something:

When I had settled on how to that bias tape direction change thingy-whatever-to-call-it I just continued to sew along the front body of the coat until I got to the first spike. When I got to the spike I folded in the edge of the trim (which I had now cut off from the roll) somehow so that it was sort of point shaped.

One side of the trim attached (Plan B style)

I then just sewed the trim on to the outside side too and when that was done I added the trim to the other half of the coat too... I started this time at the first spike and made my way up to the collar.  Of course when I got to the collar I just had to screw up again.

Dat stitch.

Yeah, unstitch again and fix it. It was a measurement mistake, there wasn't 1,5 cm on both sides so the side with less suffered..

Just showing how I made the other side of the collar when I got to that point where the direction changed...

After I had fixed the collar issue I had both front outsides (center trims) of the coat, well, trimmed. I thought I had been through hell already but hell was just starting... all those spikes were next up. Oh lord.

Front center trims done.. now to get spiked...

Now I don't feel like I even know how to explain how I did the trim around those spikes so I will just post the photos I took during the process instead. Oh, when I did the spikes I switched to my first way of attaching the trim, aka sewing both sides of the trim closed at the same time.

Finished spike point (V-shaped)

I did a slight cut in the middle when I got to the upside down V-angles..

... and folded the trim edges so that they met. (other side not folded/sewn on picture yet)

Oh, and while I was sewing at one point I noticed the machine sewed on the same spot and just wouldn't move. Okay sure there was a lot of fabric layers there but it seemed weird it wouldn't move even if I helped to push the fabric... and the machine sounded weird so after a few tries to get it to move I took the fabric out and checked the threads.

The mischief maker - knotted bobbin thread

Soon after that the sewing machine decided a knotted bobbin thread wasn't the only misfortune it wanted to inflict on me. The sewing needle broke too. Fucking great...

Sure isn't my day today...

Oh well, a lot of painstaking care and tedious hours later I had finished all the spikes. I went through hell and survived!

The outside looks nicer because I sewed on the outside and it's the side that will show anyway..

I took a break because my body was killing me.. but I decided I would finish the coat today so I came back after about 20 minutes to trim the arm openings. I had to think a while how I would go about trimming them because as I mentioned in the earlier post they are V-shaped and not curved/rounded. This makes attaching the trim all around a hassle and difficult. I decided not to add trim completely around.

Sewing arm opening trim..
(I took off a part of the sewing machine so I could put the sleeve around it and roll it around)

Finished arm opening trim

Close-up of arm hole end..

And with that Masamune's battle coat is finished. It took forever and was a major pain in the ass but it is finally done!

And now I really don't even want to see bias tape or think about trimming anything for the next few years. Even thinking about getting to work with armoring seems that much more pleasant...

Bye bye!

Masamune's coat pt.2 - Small fixes!

 Hola!

Did some more progress today. Having slept on the collar dilemma I decided to make it a bit smaller, it probably would look better this way.. and behave better. I went to get the measurement tape and randomly figured cutting off 4 cm from the upper edge would be sufficient. Because the fabric marker pen is missing (it's in the same bag as the missing seam ripper..) I just took an ordinary pencil and drew a line that followed the curve of the collar.

Cutting line ready..

... and cut!

For some reason I always hesitate cutting something in case I screw up and regret it... it just isn't easy to reattach something without making it obvious it was at some point cut out. Yeah, I worry too much. Oh well, I quickly put the coat on and noticed it looked better than before; my worries flew out the window! With that I stitched the cut collar closed again with this special stitch that is a combination of zigzag and straight stitch.

Closing the collar again after being cut..

With the collar fixed I went, again, to quickly try it on. This time I took photos. Excuse the dirty mirror...

Now I don't need to bend it at the back and it still looks pretty cool! I say win-win!

The next and last thing to finish before I can start adding the trim around the edges is to hem the arm openings. This task was... more troublesome than I had thought.

Okay, first off I went to iron the shoulder seams open.. then again this technique isn't very effective on this fabric because it doesn't take heat so well (plastic coating so higher heat is a no-no...) but oh well, at least it does some difference so ironing the seams on low heat is still better than not doing it.

Ironing shoulder seams..

With the shoulder seams looking a bit nicer I went on to hem the arm openings.

Arm opening before hemming

I started at the arm hole and worked my way up to the shoulder and down again. Before starting the sewing but after I had put the fabric in place under the presser I experimented with how to do the hemming. Seeing how I made that horizontal stitch earlier at the arm hole/side seam beginning it seemed to me it would be harder to fold the fabric at the seam (aka so that the zigzag will be hidden) nicely. I figured that if I folded the starting point (where side seam starts) just once and then sewed a bit and folded the rest twice it worked without screwing up the fabric on the outside.

Here you can see what I mean. At the start single fold and after sewing a bit I turned it double so that the zigzag would be hidden. (clicking image larger helps)

Oh, speaking of hiding the zigzaged edges.. actually I didn't really care about the zigzag being visible or not; my main reason for wanting to fold it double was to gather more fabric at the edges to get more stiffness to the arm openings, so that the shoulder part could possibly stand up a bit better and not be as.. floppy. I don't know how to explain what I mean clearly or if it even makes sense. xD I also wanted to fold it double because otherwise the arm openings drooped a bit at the shoulders.. a bit too long. Hiding the zigzag or not doesn't matter because when the trim is added it will cover almost the whole folded part anyway.

When I got to the shoulder seam it got troublesome...

When I originally cut out the shoulders they had a slight rise and were quite angled at the shoulder point. This became a bit of a problem when hemming because that shoulder point turned into excess fabric that had to disappear somewhere because it's not really possible to suddenly hem an upside down V-curve without major bumps around it. It just wouldn't lay nicely and the only thing I could figure out was to just live with the unavoidable bumps.

Like this...

... and this.

Oh well, at least on the outside there was no signs of the bumpy inside:

~  The horrors that lie inside ~

Having the inside imperfect doesn't bother me that much... the trim should cover a good chunk of the mishaps anyway. Hah, bullshit. Meagre consolation for the perfectionist inside me...

Oh, I almost forgot. While I thought I had finished hemming one of the arm openings I took it out and noticed this:

I don't even

Okay, so what happened was that when I got to the side seam/arm hole point the coat fabric had gathered there and I just continued to sew, thinking if I moved parts of the fabric away while sewing it would be alright. So I sewed to the point where I started, a few centimeters away from the seam, and backed. What I didn't know was that the fabric had bunched up and created a fold exactly on top of the starting point and I sewed on that fold instead. Fabric troll!

Oh well, nothing to do but to unstitch the part that made the troll!fold. After unstitching I realized there actually wasn't even a need to sew all around the arm opening. It held up just fine without being fully stitched around and besides the trim would keep it all in place anyway.. not to mention it's hard to get it neat because when I originally cut out the front pieces I didn't accomodate for arm openings.. aka I made no soft "arm hole" curves to make life easier when hemming. So yeah, Masamune coat arm openings end in a sharp V-shaped point. Yeah, try to hem that nicely...

Just to show what I mean + how much I left unhemmed around the side seam.

Oh well, with the arm openings almost hemmed I put the coat on quickly and noticed that my "hemming-should-make-the-shoulders-hold-their-shape-better" theory seemed to work to a satisfying degree. I had thought while working on the coat today that if the fabric wouldn't support the shoulders to stay up by its own powers I could add shoulder pads to give a little support. But it seems it does just fine without so for now I'll let it be. I'll see if I change my mind after I'm done adding the trim, which I have planned to start on tomorrow. I must say.. I'm not looking forward to it, it will most likely be a pain in the ass. I mean it.

Ciao!

Masamune's coat pt.1 - Sewing it!

 Greetings everyone!

Today I got the inspiration to continue working on my Date cosplay. This time the plan was to sew together the parts of the battle coat. There's a lot of photos because I'm documenting my progress for a school project. So with that said let's go!

First up of course is to sew the shoulder seams. I took the back piece, laid it on the ironing board (which acts as my working table) with the right side up and then took the two front pieces and put them with the right side down against the back piece.

Like this ^

Then I just sewed them on with a straight stitch.

Next thing was to determine how big I wanted the arm openings. I just took a measurement tape and decided that around 28 cm from the shoulder tip seemed okay.. according to my eye measure. I put a pin to act as a mark and then just sewed the sides closed, starting from the pin (aka where arm opening ends of course) and sewing all way down with a straight stitch.

With the arm opening marked..

Sewing one side closed ~

I did an extra horizontal stitch at the arm opening's end for strength.

With both side seams closed I decided to iron the seams open for a neater appearance. Also it's easier to do now while the spiky lower part of the coat isn't yet sewn on. I put the iron on the second lowest setting (just one dot) just to be on the safe side because, as I have noticed earlier, this fabric has a plastic coating on the right side and tends to roll up when heated. I also put my PSP case on top as a weight.

After I had ironed the seams open..

The next thing to do was to sew on the spiky part. Now I remembered having added some extra length to the front pieces when cutting them out, even though I knew the total width of the back piece together with the front pieces would fit together perfectly with the lower spiked part. Needless to say with the extra length added to the front pieces the spiky part ran a little short on both ends. To see exactly how much excess length there were at the front pieces I took out the center points on the spiky part and on the back piece by folding both in half and putting a pin at the fold.

Center points marked on both upper piece (right) and lower piece (left)

I decided to sew the lower spiked part on, starting from the center and going outwards. This just to make sure the fabric wouldn't move itself off-center while sewing if I had started from an edge.

Starting to sew the two pieces together. Right sides together of course and a straight stitch.

When I was done I noticed the excess was around 6 cm on both sides. I temporarily folded the excess length inside into a small triangle and pinned it in place.

Showing excess length of the front piece(s)

A photo of the temporary triangle fold

At this point I went to quickly put the coat on in front of a mirror. I have no pictures of that but I can say that I noticed the arm openings were waaaaaay too small and because of that the whole fit of the coat looked.. well.. stupid. I then went back to unstitch around 10 cm from each side seam to get bigger arm holes. Of course I put a new marker pin in place on both sides so I wouldn't rip up too much. To make my cosplay life harder the seam ripper has been missing for some time now so I had to make do with small Scizors scissors instead.

After I had ripped open one side

With both side seams partly ripped up I went and reinforced the stitching closest to the unstitched parts and then redid the horizontal strengthening stitches, like seen on picture 5 from top. Now I had bigger and more well-fitted arm openings. With the arm holes fixed and not bothering me anymore I went back to fix the excess length of the front pieces... by cutting it off. Because they had been folded for some time there was now a slight folding line that I could follow to get the cut right.

Bye bye excess length..

And of course I re-zigzaged it.

I also decided to open the seams of the lower spiked part now that it was attached. It just looks nicer on the outside when the seams aren't bunched but instead lay flat.

It looks a bit like a puzzle.. xD

Now only the collar was left to sew on for the coat to be whole... excluding the white trims which I will add another day. Okay, the collar. I had four collar pieces (inside and outside halves) so I just took two of them and sewed them together at the end to get one whole collar piece.

Sewing two collar pieces together. (straight stitch)

One collar piece with center seam ironed open..

I needed the collar to be sort of stiff so I took some interfacing fabric and cut out fitting parts and ironed them onto the fabric's wrong side. Obviously glue side against the wrong side. I did cut the interfacing fabric in half for ease of ironing it on. A bigger piece is harder to iron on without it moving and wrinkling itself at some point.

A fitting bit of interfacing fabric cut out for half the collar length..

Interfacing fabric ironed on and excess cut off..

I repeated the process for the second collar. When both collars were done I matched them up with wrong sides together and noticed they weren't exactly the same size. Bleh.

Not identical...

I had to trim the bigger piece slightly at the edges to get them to match better. They were still not perfect but at least I could start sewing them together with a straight stitch. But. While I had sewn one half of the collar and got to the other half I noticed that if I matched up the angled point where the tip starts, aka where the collar will touch the shoulder seam, the edge mismatched even more. Getting the angled shoulder attachment point to match was more important than to get the edges to match so I just cut off a part of the edge while sewing.

The edge that wouldn't match if the shoulder attachment point matched..

.. so I trimmed it and continued sewing the collars together.

With the collar now having an inside and outside piece and being whole I test pinned it in place. I noticed one of the shoulder seams didn't meet up at the right point so I had to fix that.

Shoulder seam modified. The lighter seam is the original one and the more blue-ish one is the new one.

With the shoulder seam made to go together a little "earlier" than it originally was it fit together with the collar's angled shoulder point and made it possible for the collar's "tip" to run down the upper front of the coat without a lot of forced bending and risk for bumps. With that problem fixed I pinned the collar in place again and sewed it on.

Collar pinned in place..

While sewing I had to constantly form and bend the collar's "pointed tips" so that it would run along right with the front pieces curves. With some patience and being careful it turned out well!

Sewing the collar on..

With the collar on I went to try the coat on again in front of a mirror. I'm pretty pleased with it so far. Here's two (rather crappy) mirror photos.

There's only one thing I wonder if I chould change a bit and that's the width of the collar.. I'm kinda split if I should or not because in a way I like the collar when it's big and more cartoony.. it looks a bit sumptuous I guess. Then again if I don't bend it a bit at the back (or if I let it stand up, which it can do) it looks like a Dracula collar and I'm not sure if I want that effect lol. If I made it a bit smaller it would be.. well.. smaller and the opposite of what the bigger collar looks like; a bit more restrained and sophisticated. Then again Masamune (or well, whole Sengoku Basara cast) is more the person to be over-the-top... argh I can't decide! Any outside opinions? 

Bye bye!