Finishing Ichito's "jacket"

 Hiya!

So today I finished Ichito's "jacket" hitatare? chihaya? I don't know thingy.
First off I attached the sleeves to the body and then I just hemmed everything. I left the sleeves open on both sides and the body of the garment is fully open at the sides too.

Sleeves are on.

Huge sleeves...

After hemming everything I just had left to do those chest cord decoration thingies... so here's how I made them:

Draw the shape.

 First off I went to our outside storage and cut off a tiny square of this one leather-ish plum colored fabric. Then I took a reference and drew the shape of those flame/flower/whatever decorations and cut them out.

Sew them to the ribbons... (notice sewing machine left fugly marks on them -.-)

... and then sew them to the collar of the "jacket".

And then it was finished. Now I can just tie them whenever wearing it. Although I could have made those ribbons a bit longer mom pointed out, oh well.

Ah, lovely thing ~

Now I have left to do the obi, "flap" with higanbana design, dark blue kimono, tekkou, bracelet, tattsuke hakama-ish pants, feet wrappings, shoes, eyepatch... err... let's just say everything else. OTL

Bye bye!

Cosplay stuff in the mail yesterday.. but not mine.

This update is pretty... I don't know...
The kimono and glasses I ordered for my twin's Sannan cosplay (Hakuouki) arrived yesterday (yes, both of them at the same time) and well, I felt a need to test them to see that everything was alright -so I could leave positive feedback in eBay/Tradera- and so. And well, I had the house for myself most of the morning so I did a super quick test to see what I would look like as Sannan... and no I'm not going to actually cosplay him. xD I just grabbed my Byakuya wig and my white under kimono from my Bleach shihakusho and put on the green vintage kimono and round glasses and voilá.

Weird smile...

 Ignore the lack of make-up and that I look a bit tired... because I was. Mom came like 9 on the morning and went "CLEAN THE WHOLE HOUSE WHILE WE ARE AWAY, K?" dsfhahsfdaf.

Tried to look serious... it doesn't work during morning time...

 Yeah. I still don't knooooooooowwwww.

Ichito sleeve progress pt.2

Alrighty everyone, I did the second sleeve today. Here's the breakdown!

Preparations for marking every buttonhole...

Close-up of the marking process. Dots.

After that I started to sew the buttonholes. Again. I had to install the memory thingy myself this time, it worked after some errors...

... and then I got one like this. It doesn't look anything like a buttonhole man. -.-

I kept doing them anyway and when I had finished a little bit more than half the sleeve...

.. I finally got the first perfect one. Finally.

But that joy didn't last long because of course directly after that perfect one...

IT MADE NOT ONE BUT THREE MEGA DERP BUTTONHOLES FFFFFFFF-

Okay, machines will never work like you want them do. For every job well done they will pay you back with three times shit. Don't trust them.

Problem?

I promise, it trolled me.

But that wasn't the end of the trolling... because it seems three derpholes wasn't enough....

FFFFFFFFFFFFOOUUURRRRRRRRRRRR!!!1 Need I say more?

But when I had almost finished the sleeve something impossible happened...

It suddenly did two perfect buttonholes. What the fuck.

Wow, this thing sure can't decide if it wants to be my friend or not... OTL

Oh well, 43 buttonholes later and some raging I made the slits and threaded ribbon through them, just like I did for the other sleeve yesterday night.

Ah, it's handy to have the whole roll.

And well, then I just tied and burned the ribbon ends and it was done. Here's one in-progress pic:

Not sure if gusta.

The sleeves aren't attached and stuff needs to be hemmed and, err... lots of stuff left. But I'll finish this sucker! 8D

That's all for this time, laterz!

Ichito sleeve progress pt.1

Ah, lovely. I actually did some cosplay progress today, go me!

So, well.. here's some explanations and photos of what I did today. Sorry in advance for the crappy lighting, it was late... err, it still is but whatever.

 Okay, so first off I had to figure out a lot of things and mom helped me count how many "full patterns" (read: every different "ribbon loop" before it started over again) I could fit into the sleeve and stuff... I suck at maths, big time. Then I had to decide how close to the arm opening I wanted the ribbon to run, how big I wanted the buttonholes to be and how long I wanted the "long part" and the "short part" of the ribbon to be and how-- ... screw it, my explanations make no sense anyway so I'll proceed to show pics instead. xD

Ah, mass producing buttonholes.

Mom helped me to check how the memory function on this black sewing machine worked and after I found this machine part explanation after some googling because we couldn't find the manual we got it to work. Yay. She then set the memory function to make same sized buttonholes and then showed me how to sew a few and then I took over.

Buttonholes, buttonholes, buttonholes... Did I say buttonholes?

After what felt like forever my huge-ass-sleeve was filled with buttonholes. Yay. Some of them ended up being mildly derpy when others were perfect. Hah, machines won't do perfect work all the time...

Poor innocent fabric gets cut...

After that I snipped off all the loose threads and began to make slits into the buttonholes so they became... well... buttonholes. Only I wouldn't be using them for buttons.

Ah, lovely blue ribbon. Now it looks better.

 After all the slits were done I just took that blue ribbon and threaded it through the sleeve, making sure it was loose enough to not bunch up. Then I just burned the ends and tied them together and then finito.

Tomorrow the other sleeve will receive the same treatment run sleeve run! and hopefully I'll get some better photos of the thing and maybe I'll even have time to attach the sleeves to the jacket-thingy-whatever-it-is (it looks a bit like a hitatare or chihaya I think...) but before that.. *yawns*

.. I'm off to bed. Night.

Desucon 2012 tickets!

 Hi!

So, I've been immensely bored all day. I went and grabbed our other black sewing machine earlier today (we have 3 sewing machines: an overlocker, a black normal one and an über high-tech one. lol) and put it on the table. Mom needs to show me how to do buttonholes with it when she gets home so that I can continue on one of my cosplays, namely Ichito. I decided I will do craploads of buttonholes on the sleeves and then thread some blue ribbon through it. Our first plan was to do belt loops but it didn't work out because in that case the ribbon wouldn't have been seen on the inside.. like it's supposed to. So buttonholes it is.
Man, I've barely started and I need to finish this cosplay before Desucon in early June and then I need to make Okita's yukata too. Thank god that one is very easy though.. but knowing me I'll be stressing to get both cosplays done last minute anyway. *shrugs*

Oh well, I just went a swing to the kitchen and checked the post on the kitchen table.. there was a small letter... OMG DESUCON TICKETS! <3 Yep, totally heading for Desucon this year!!

See you!

When a decanter makes you ridiculously happy...

Some time ago I was searching all the corners of the internet for a glass bottle, with a glass cork, that would have a resemblance to ochimizu, as seen in the Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan anime. I checked eBay, Tradera, random googling and everything I found was either widely different from what I wanted and if the bottle itself happened to have the right shape then the cork was waaaaay off... and if both were okay it was always over 25 cm in height and thus a no-no... and I didn't want anything bigger than 20 cm at most, preferably around 15 cm. So after searching several days for a close enough decanter I admitted to myself it indeed was a pain in the ass to find a good one and that this search would take me quite some time... but then I stumbled upon one auction at Huuto.net that made me go omfgyayafghdafghd! It qualified for all my requirements; it was cheap, it was small, it had a glass cork and both the cork and the bottle had a close enough resemblance omg so lucky in general to what I was looking for... so my feelings were like this:

Luckily I had a good friend who could buy it for me and then Jäärä delivered it to me before Chibicon, yays~

Aaah, pretty little thing that I thought I'd never be so happy to own.

Now I'm just wondering.. I need some red liquid to keep in it when I'm cosplaying Souji Okita at Desucon in Lahti. I will use it as a prop.

Bright liquid is bright.

So yeah, I need to find something that looks like that... and it's a bonus if it's edible. Yay for carrying around ochimizu... but I'll have to resist the urge to drink it at the con... resist the urge to drink it... lol

Anyone have any ideas what I could use? ^_^ (I should be able to buy it in Finland/Sweden)

Chibicon 2012 behind + Next con

Chibicon came and went. It was a not-so-big con held at Oulu's Pohjankartano, Finland. Finally a con in the north, big plus for that from me.
I must say I was surprised how big the con building was, it was amazing to hold a con in! Hmm, let's see.. the con itself was nice and I had a good time. Nothing really to complain about. Although I must say the number of cosplayers was surprisingly small.. needless to say the camera running was minimal because, well, there simply wasn't so much to photograph. Oh well, it was to be expected because it was Chibicon after all.
About the merchandise, well, it was the standard con merchandise pretty much - mangas, plushies, figures, doujinshis and a booth for ramune and other Japanese treats. I didn't buy anything because I'm saving money for the summer cons and because I didn't find anything that made me go OMGMUSTBUYNOW.
 I also went and watched the FFFight and it was entertaining.. although I noticed the same people participating twice... *shrugs* I also attended the Sengoku Basara panel which was nice.

I went there with my friend Jäärä who came up to my place late on Thursday. On Friday we con prepped and tested our Chibicon cosplays; we had a photoshoot outside. Most photos turned out pretty high on the derp scale but I think we got some decent ones too. Here's a few pictures:

The Kuchikis and their plushies.

FLY. REACH THE HEAVENS SEAWEED MAN!

Jarmo, the Seaweed Ambassador, went flying. Yes, we named him Jarmo. At one point I accidentally tossed him over our terrace field... good thing he didn't fall into that hole behind the snow and the fence itself... would have been harder to get him up. lol

Yo, I'm fine man.

I will upload more photos to my cosplay.com account slowly the coming days, so if you're interested be sure to check it out.

•Next con•

The next con I'm going to attend will be Desucon in Lahti, 8-10 June. I'm already longing for it! Gotta continue working on the cosplays...

It seems Kemi's comic/manga day will be held 18-20 May so I will be there too. What cosplay I will wear I have not decided yet.. most likely I will recycle an older cosplay. I will inform later when I've decided which one.