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.

A trip to Eurokangas...

So today I went to Eurokangas (a fabric store) to check if they still had that dark blue fabric left that we bought in 2010... they didn't. I guess I will need to use another blue for Ichito's kimono then. Oh well, I looked around for other fabrics for other cosplays too and whenever I found the perfect color it was wrong fabric type. Ahfgsgd. I found this perfect super pale violet that I could use for Souji Okita's yukata but then it was bed sheet fabric... even cut and sewn into a bed sheet with elastics around. Too thin too. Ahfgsgd.
While I was walking around searching fabrics I found a fabric patterned a certain way...

You think what I think?

 My mind went "AMMAGAAD AHFGDSHFGS" because a few days ago me and some friends had planned to do a Hakuouki cosplay group of the 'bad guys' and well, I picked Chikage Kazama...

BADUMTSSH

You see it now? That pattern is fuckin' perfect for his haori collar! I was probably staring at that fabric for 5 minutes before I went and asked the sellers if they had it in different colors than violet and lime green... she checked up what colors the other Eurokangas stores around Finland had with her computer; she found white, red, turquoise... but no golden/brown. It didn't come in that color. Of course not.

My feelings were like this:

Followed by this:

So yeah. I got back home without any new fabrics. Bleh.
Rage comics made by me by the way.

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 ~

Ichito's 'flap' pt.4

 Hi guys!

Finally some progress on my Ichito cosplay... it has been 2 weeks before last time I sewed on it. Gah, did I mention I'm starting to feel the Desu-panic?

Oh well... the 'flap'. Last time I worked on it I screwed up and had to unstitch the lining. This time it went way better because I started sewing the two pieces together from a different spot than before, so I avoided the whole "oh shit the side seams doesn't match!!1" crap.
So first off I started at one of the side seams and sewed down one side of the 'flap'.

I am seewiiing, I am seewiiiiiing, mooore cosplaaaaysss, to the coooons~

And after that I repeated the process but from the other side. Then I sewed the sides of the 'back flap' too, although I left the bottom parts of both front and back 'flaps' open and the whole upper part.

Turned it right side out...

Eeew it's so... bumpy and just not flat and pretty. The sides of the 'flap' wanted to turn backwards all the time... so it was time to pick up the straightening iron...

After some ironing it looks better..

Lining

When I tried to iron the side seams, which by the way are narrow and upside down V-formed, the lining kept wrinkling itself. Bah. Mom came to the rescue and cut some small slits on the curved egdes of the lining and helped me iron those tricky parts. After that I stitched around the edges so it would hold its shape and not go shkfkds.

Stitched egdes (flash photo)

I did turn in the ends and close the bottom half of the 'back flap', although I have no photos of that. I have left to close the bottom of the front 'flap' and the upper part and then I need to come up with a way to keep it attached to my body; I'm not sure if the obi and the clothes under it will keep it in place by itself...

That's all for today, bye!

Närcon 2012 ticket!

Hello!

I know that this is a pretty short and kinda useless post but whatever. I just wanted to say that today I ordered myself a Närcon ticket and I also got home an important letter which I had been waiting for! I'm really looking forward to the con!

The ticket says: "Den är ganska stor då den är ganska awesome", which translates to "It is kinda big because it is kinda awesome", haha!

See ya at the con!

Fabrics for Ichito

 Hi all.

I'm bored right now and mom was watching icehockey recently and today she doesn't really feel like helping me finish that 'flap' thingy -with its lining problems- so I went and checked what leftover fabrics we had in our 'clothing room' more like sewing supply room lol instead because I'm in a cosplay progress mood. I tried to search for that light gray fabric that I used for my hakamas when making my Byakuya cosplay from Inu Yasha year 2010. Yes, my first cosplay. I had a faint memory we had scrap pieces of that fabric left but it seems we did not.. crap, I could have used some for Ichito's eyepatch thingies. That fabric isn't finito though, the bolt is in the storage if I'm not mistaken.
Oh well, instead I found a dark blue fabric that could work for Ichito's kimono. Although it's a bit darker and lacks a violet-ish touch to it -as I would prefer- I still think I will use it.. but mom said this piece probably isn't big enough for the kimono so I have to pay a visit to Eurokangas (where we bought it 2010 too, also originally used for Byakuya cosplay's haori) and check if they have it left. I also found a piece of dark brown kinda stretchy fabric that mom said is one of the many fabrics that's left from her own fabric store. She said it's used for pants and it would work for Ichito's hakama-ish pants. She thinks there's enough fabric and I hope she's right, save money hohoho. I think this piece is all that is left from that fabric bolt, she probably sold the rest years ago so if this isn't enough we need to go buy something else...

Lastly a picture of the fabrics:

(flash photo)

I love how cameras never show the actual colors... both are darker in real life.
Oh, and I noticed I only have a month on me to finish my Desucon cosplays. Shiet, need to start working for real now!

Bye!

Hijikata wig styling

Today after school I went to the post office in town and picked up two items, one of them being wig stands. Yay now I can finally start styling wigs! I've been thinking about cutting the bangs on my Hijikata wig shorter for some time now because I thought they were a bit too long... so I decided to plunge into a new challenge today and cut and style a wig myself for the first time ever. I must admit I was hesitating at first and scared to screw up. It doesn't really help that I'm bad with scissors either... I'm left-handed and I've always used right-hand scissors and some angles are really hard and/or awkward to cut in... I can't use left-hand scissors because those are even weirder for me. lol I tried once when I was young and quickly decided to use "normal scissors". Before cutting the wig I had of course read and watched some how-to tutorials earlier so I knew somewhat what to do and not do.

Pardon the lighting again.. we have pretty sucky lamps in the house lol, they make everything yellow when taking photos...

Started cutting... lol super uneven or what? Orz

Looks a  bit better now...

Sorry I don't have photos of the 'spiking' process but here's a WIP photo after the styling. If you want to compare before and after photos check out my earlier Hijikata wig blog post.

Please don't mind the wrong color kimono, I know it's too light.
I have yet to make a darker one so I used a substitute...

It's annoying when trying to take photos of yourself and you end up with a derp or semi-derp face on 80% of them... OTL I'm so photogenic. lol

That's all for today, see ya folks!