Uppcon is green!

Today I got my Uppcon ticket! So now I'm coming! 8D (even though bad date, rush after school ends~)
I will be sleeping at my father's place a bit outside Stockholm and my twin Jäätynyt Enkeli will keep me company at the con. Dad might drive us every morning or otherwise we'll take the train, haven't planned yet how we'll get to Uppsala.

My cosplay plans aren't set yet, but this is what I had in my mind:

Friday - Gin Ichimaru (Bleach)

Saturday - Ichito (Asaki, Yumemishi)

Sunday - Toshizo Hijikata (Hakuouki: Shinsengumi Kitan)

I might change Hijikata for Okita, not sure yet.. it depends. And Ichito is not 100% sure either, but I want to do a BOOM unique/cool cosplay for Saturday. XD Yeah.. we'll see but this is what my plans look like at the moment.

"Projektarbete" change

So today after school I went and checked if my former Swedish teacher was still at her working room. She is one of my two supervisors (normally you only have one supervisor.. but I'm trololo so I have two, my art teacher being the other one) for this one big "projektarbete" (project work) every student has to do during the 3rd and final year of "gymnasiet" or "lukio" for you Finns. Upper secondary school for ages 16-19. So well, due to personal reasons I will go a 4th year in school and that means I'll also get an extra year to do this project work. It's a big task, you chose one thing you want to work with (it's pretty free but it has to connect to the program you've chosen to go in some way) that you have to work on independently and I think you got around one year to finish it. We got to choose what teacher we wanted as our supervisor too.

- Wait. Why am I telling you all this boring non-cosplay crap you ask?

Well, I'll come to that now. Me, being the herpderpgeek I am decided one year ago I wanted to do something unique as my project work. Something I would feel inspired to work on instead of the opposite. So I asked my supervisor if I could do a costume... yes, a cosplay costume... and it was a yes. Yay. Actually my supervisor (aka former Swedish teacher) has an interest in Japan and I've been showing her some of my cosplays before with positive feedback, haha. My art teacher, the second supervisor, used to be my sewing teacher in "grundskolan" ("peruskoulu" in Finnish, nine-year compulsory school) as well as my art teacher for many years so she has been helping me sewing original character clothes years ago. xD

Okay, so this all is old stuff. But what is new is that today, as I said in the beginning of this blog post, I visited my supervisor. I asked her if it was possible for me to change the chosen character because I had not started working on the costume properly yet and because I already had other cosplay plans set for this year (and some for 2013 even) and I probably wouldn't have time to work on this "project work cosplay" between the other ones. So the former character was Kai from the Luminous Arc game and the new one is... Masamune Date from Sengoku Basara. Yes, that armor version I mentioned earlier I'll do for Porukka Kasaan!'s Sengoku Basara cosplay group next year. It was a good move to switch because now I can kill two birds with one stone. I'll need to cosplay Date anyway because I signed up for the group and now it's also my school work. Now I will really have to do the armor version for the group and get it done too, if not by anything else then by school pressure. Yeah, damn sweet.

So my plans went from this...

... to this:

I'm perfectly sane. :'DDD lolnope

And I will do Kai someday, just not now.

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!