Kemi's comic day

 Sup all.

So I attended Kemi's Comic day today, it's a small event for, well, comics. Today there was the 4-hour 'manga part' of the event. I live close to Kemi so I went there; I didn't bother to put on cosplay so I just put on my blue wool kimono ensemble and my Saitou wig instead. I'm glad I didn't because there probably wasn't much more than 5 cosplayers...
I met some few people I recognized, or well, they recognized me, lol. I hung around with Ellu and we had a blast, Moomin lemonade and derpin' goes a long way! :D

But there was a rather... err... unpleasant experience. Warning for angry rant and foul words. Let's say a few people had major problems trying to guess my gender (I KNOW I LOOK ANDROGYNOUS, OKAY?) and it, well, their inappropriate touching went waaaaay over my comfort zone. >_> I was too shocked to instantly say stop but I sure felt offended because, hey, where's your fucking manners!?!  (╬⓪益⓪)
I didn't give an answer because I was annoyed beyond words, but at least they eventually stopped. But still... don't fucking go touching my chest and whatnot for like 5 minutes – that's plain rude and offending and, even more so, when you don't even apologize!! Fucking scum of mankind, I hope you burn in hell. ╭∩╮(⊙▂⊙╬)╭∩╮

Oh well, despite that one dipshit it was a nice experience; nothing more to say really. Sorry for the lack of photos.

Bye.

Eyepatch - because just wraps won't cut it

 Hi all.

I was supposed to continue working on the "ninja pants" for Ichito.. but.. I felt like doing something small before I continued on them.. so I did his eyepatch. I've been trying to look if he has an eyepatch "plate" under those wrappings and it seems he does, at least on these two pictures if you look closely...

His wrappings are loose here but it seems like he has something covering his eye...

Notice that rounded edge poking out...

 So yeah, there's a lack of references to go by (obscure game is obscure...) but from what I can tell it do indeed look like he... well...

(yeah I'm not tired at all..)

 But here goes~

Sorry I didn't take progress pictures but what I did was I went and got a craft foam piece (color doesn't matter), cut it into shape and rounded the corners a bit. Then I picked up a scrap piece of those 'feet tubes' and cut out two pieces, slightly bigger than the craft foam piece. I zigzaged around the fabric and it looked like this:

The piece to the left is "right side" and soft, the one to the right is "wrong side" and kinda leather-ish

 Then I just took the side of the fabric that I wanted to be against my eye (the softer side) and sewed it to the craft foam piece at the two ends. I tried to turn in the longer sides but noticed I had cut the fabric a bit too short for that so I tried to glue them onto the foam and even use jesus tape (read: duct tape) but it didn't really work either. *shrugs* Oh well, I took the other fabric piece and this one was to be the side facing outwards, so I used the leather-ish side. Sewed the ends again to the foam and then I tried to fold in the sides over to the back but it proved to be a pain in the butt and I had to cut the foam a bit shorter to get the other side to fold in. lol my explanations probably make no sense. OTL I did get the zigzaged edges over to the back (where they won't be seen) after a lot of tweaking but it resulted in a tiny 'airbag' in the back.. oh well, not that I really mind because the 'airbag' actually makes the thing more comfortable over my eye. xD;

It's kinda fugly but it works...

My comment:

Oh well, it works for its purpose and it's not like it's going to be seen so much anyway because those wraps (which I will make later) will be over it and thus cover it... at least it's comfortable (and bendable) so that's good, comfort is always appreciated in cosplay... how comfortable it now is to be half-blind for a day...

Bye bye!

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!