Arm bracers for the Gym Leader!

Today I cut out most of the parts for Falkner's jacket, I will start sewing it tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll also finish his "mini hakama". The progress for today is Fazer's Falkner's arm bracers. They are just made of red and dark-blue-almost-black rib knit fabric. Mom sewed them with the overlocking machine (I guess it's also called a serger) because, err, she just did.

Yo bro, I dig these things

You might notice I'm wearing kimono. I wore that kimono all day together with a matching haori.. even when I went to vote at the town's municipal election. The stares... xD Oh, and don't ask me why my hair is standing up like that. I have no damn clue. When I woke up today my hair had decided to go SUPER SAIYAN and when I went to look at the mirror I lol'd so very hard. I tried to comb it down but it bounced right back up and my hair has now been like that the whole day. It's ridiculous and awesome at the same time...

Sayonara!

Falkner's mini hakama pt.2

 Guess what guys?

There's only 5 days left to finish my Falkner cosplay before Skecon. Ouch.
Decided to sew on his hakama style pants most of the day. I won't explain so much what I did because I'm lazy but I'll show some photos of the process at least. It's pretty simple.

I started with doing the pleats. Remember, this is not the authentic way to make hakama. Two back (overlap) and two in front. I'm fully aware that hakama normally have 5 pleats in the front but Falkner's hakama doesn't really look like your typical hakama... and I kinda interpret those two "folds" on the front like pleats soooo... *shrugs* Besides I need to make pleats or I'd have those humongous granny pants which I do not want. lol

Making front pleats..

... and back pleats.

I went ahead and ironed the pleats and after that I needed to cut out the last missing parts.. the ties. I used most of the last bits of the fabric I had left. I cut out 4 about 165 cm long and 7,5 cm wide strips of fabric. I would have made them wider if I wasn't so short on fabric.

 Ties cut out

Zigzaged all around and sewed them together at one end so I had 2 long ones

Ironed to get a middle fold

Sew the ties into a long "tube" so that the zigzag is folded inside...

Sew a straight seam across the pleats to secure them
(front piece on photo, of course do same to back piece)

Pin the ties in place and sew them on

At this point I was done except for heming the pant legs. I tried them on very sloppily and noticed that they were waaaaaay too long. My typical mistake. ._. Oh well, it's much easier to shorten than to lengthen..

They were supposed to end at my knees. lol

Gonna cut off some excess length next time and hem them. *yawns* I don't feel like doing anymore for today. Next time I'll finish these so that I can start working on Falkner's jacket.

Bye for now!

Wig head and ponytail...

Yesterday in school I noticed that in the art classroom there was three white styrofoam heads on the table with the markers. I can't remember seeing them there before and when I asked the teacher if I could borrow one she said she got them from another teacher and that I could borrow one as long as I returned it. Yay!

So now I had a temporary wig head... so I decided to detangle my Hijikata wig and after it was all tanglefree and awesome try to put it in a ponytail using this tutorial... LOLNOPE.
So well, at the start it seemed like it could work even though I have no fucking clue how the person who made the tutorial managed to get step 3 to be so smooth. But I still continued even though I had what looked more like a lumpy raven's nest than a wig. When I was almost done I looked closer on the creation and.. I noticed that I was wearing my pants inside out. BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT I WAS ABOUT TO SAY. I was about to say that... that... TABLEFLIP!! (ﾉ °益°)ﾉ 彡 ┻━┻

I undid everything and cut off the hairties because I couldn't get them off any other way. Lovely, my wig was tangled again and I had wasted around 4 hours first on detangling it and then trying to put it up only to be back on square one + my room was a mess, I had lost a fair bunch of wig fibers from all the combing, my back hurt and my pants were still on inside out.

After the inner raging I tried to detangle parts of the wig again. But.

No but seriously, I cut the wig shorter because I had been thinking about doing that anyway since after Kemi's manga day...

Before cutting

Showing the difference

After cutting

 Yeah.. that's it for today. Lesson learnt: don't ever try to put a long wig into a ponytail again, you will want to kill something.. possibly with fire. A medium length wig might be fine though... This also means that I will just do Hijikata at Skecon too with his hair untied.. if Chizuru is bored she can braid it... braid!Hijikata. And I also noticed there's only 10 days left before Skecon and I'm only about half-way done with Falkner and I still need to buy the bus tickets. Wonderful.

~Autumn's Last Breath~ Hajime Saitou photoshoot

Yesterday me and my twin Jäätynyt Enkeli decided to have a cosplay photoshoot outside in our yard and in the area nearby. Almost all leaves have fallen and the first snow came a few days ago but it melted away; we had morning frost on some parts of the ground yesterday. It was around 0 ºC outside but we managed.. somehow.. although during the last 15 minutes something I couldn't feel my fingers.. but what won't you do for cosplay?

So I decided to cosplay Hajime Saitou from Hakuouki because I feel I don't have so many decent photos of that cosplay.. also he is one of my favorite characters to cosplay because we have so very similar personalities.

Cosplayer: Valkoinen Samurai
Photographer: Jäätynyt Enkeli

 

(I took this photo)

 And then two photos on which I played with some light effects~

OH WHYYYYY is my fav photo always blurry? *tableflip*

And lastly some photos I took myself at the rowanberry trees; my photographer couldn't get a good angle because I was standing on a higher surface than he was and he is shorter than me.

And that's the end of the Saitou photospam for now. We had a lot of fun even though it was so cold after the sun had set, aka during the later half of the photoshoot. I REGRET NOTHING! Of course at one point we went inside to get some stuff and to warm up and mom came and raged. "Oh no you two don't go out again, don't you have enough photos already? You're gonna get sick!" lolnope~ We ignored her warnings coming from the kitchen and ninja'd our way outside. U MAD MOM?

Falkner's mini hakama pt.1

I was bored and decided to start sewing on Falkner's hakama-ish pants to get some progress done, after all Skecon is slowly closing in; I have only 17 days left to get everything done, heuheuheuheu...

Last weekend mom helped me cut out the parts for my pants. We were lucky, the fabric we had at home was just enough for Falkner's kimono style shirt and mini hakama. Phew~

Oh, and before I start. This is not the authentic way to make hakama, just for costume purposes. The patterns are just originally these huge pant's patterns which I shortened and modified later on. The modifications I just did what my brain told me to do.

Front and back pieces cut out, two of each obviously

I started with zigzaging around all four pieces. I decided to save the blue thread so I used white thread for this.. it doesn't matter anyway because the zigzag won't be seen on the outside. After I had zigzaged all pieces I took both back pieces and started folding in at the sides to get these hakama style openings.

Impromptu folding (both back pieces)

I tried to get both of them the same size and depth. After I had got both back side opening folds like I wanted them I put away one of the back pieces, took one front piece and copied the back piece's folding over. Must try to get them as similar as possible. Repeat for the other front piece and then just iron the opening folds flat and stitch them in place.

After ironing and sewing it in place
(I folded in the edge closest to the opening so that the zigzag won't peek out)

But upon closer inspection I noticed something...

SKIPPED STITCHES. WHYYYYYYYYYYY

I tried re-threading the sewing machine at least thrice and switching the sewing needle but nope, the problem didn't go away...
I find it weird how I didn't get skipped stitches at all when I made Falkner's shirt earlier, it's the exact same fabric and I used the same needle...

I see you little troll...

I decided to screw it and sew anyway. I just want this thing done, if it bothers me in the future I can just undo the seams and remake those failed parts...

Next thing to do was to sew the outer side seams closed and after that sew the inseam/inner-pant-leg-whatever seams closed.

Outer side seams sewed, obviously one front and one back piece

Inseam sewed closed

Next thing to do was to align the crotch, right sides together of course, and then sew along the curve.

Crotch aligned, before sewing

 Now I had something that resembled pants... or not. Instead of mini hakama I now had these humongous ultra XXXL sized granny pants! I don't see anything "mini" about them right now... Aren't they sexy?

Ihan helevetin maukasta..

Errr, maybe not so...

Oh well, it's not like this sucker will stay like this forever. I have yet to pleat it, add the ties and hem the pant legs. I'll fix that another time.

This is good progress for tonight. *yawns*

Pokéballs! + Falkner progress

 Hiiiiiiiiiii!

Earlier today I decided to check if I could find my old candy container Pokémon figure pokéballs.. and I did. Now I at least have some kind of fitting prop to go with my Falkner cosplay, yay! It's kinda hard to come up with poses when you don't have props.. I also decided that if Jäätynyt Enkeli and Sairu-chan want to borrow a pokéball I'd lend them one each so that we all would have different but still matching pokéballs!

I thought that Jäätynyt Enkeli could use the Lure Ball (left) because it's.. well, blue, and kinda similar to a Great Ball which Silver has in this official art. Also it was introduced in Gen 2 of Pokémon so it kinda fits. Sairu-chan could borrow the Repeat Ball (middle) because it has the same color scheme as Erika whom she will cosplay. I would use the Heavy Ball (right) because it was also introduced in Gen 2 of Pokémon and it fits Falkner's color scheme somehow too.

Today I also finished Falkner's kimono style shirt. Not so much to say because it's really simple and straight-forward. I took some few pictures though.

I hemmed the arm openings, nothing special.

Cut out the collar pieces, sewed them together at one end so I got one long piece and ironed it.

Pinned the collar in place and started sewing..

Collar done

After I had hemmed the bottom. Finished.

One part of the cosplay finished, yay! And I love how my camera fucks up the colors. None of these pictures show the real color of the fabric, trolololo. Hopefully soon I'll start sewing Falkner's mini hakama.

That's it for today.

Falkner wig

On Monday this week I went to the post office and picked up my Falkner wig. It arrived some days earlier but I couldn't go get it then. I didn't have time to open and try it on until recently but I must say I love the color; it's this awesome mix of a lot of different colored fibers like different shades of blues and grays.
The bangs could have been a bit longer but I don't mind because they're good enough (aka they cover my eye) and I was expecting them to be a bit shorter than what the character has anyway because this wasn't a wig specifically meant for Falkner or anything. XD

Now some try-on photos. I woke up pretty recently so I look like a mess.. oh, and I'm wearing my silk robe as usual.. I'm always wearing it on mornings and some hours before going to sleep. lol

Outdoor light

I don't feel a need to style it because it looks pretty good as is. It is very easily fluffable too so I can arrange the fibers, tease them and have them keep the wilder style without falling flat directly. I'm wondering though, should I roll with black eyebrows (like on photos) or should I go get something blue instead? I think black seems to look just fine but.. I'm not 100% sure.