Suigintou - Making a dream cosplay

Suigintou has been on my to-do list quite some time. I knew I wanted to cosplay her as soon as I saw her. I loved her costume and I loved her personality. Unfortunately she had to wait her moment to shine for a loooong time. But now let's get to the process of making suigintou!

Did her costume according to the older design

My fabric of choice was velvet. I wanted to make it from navy velvet, but unfortunately I wasn't able to find it, so I had to go with black. Still a bit salty about this. Patterns for the costume were easy to make, except for the sleeves. I struggled a lot with those, because I wanted to make them perfect. I changed the pattern multiple times during the process, and in the end I think I got the result I wanted. There are three different parts for the costume: top, bottom and underskirt. Also there is hoop skirt with tulle overlay and the wings can be taken off. The costume is fully lined.

All the materials.

Patterns ready to be cut.

Top. There is a zipper on the back of the costume. I really should have put the zipper on the side, so that I could have sew the wings on the costume and not have to do the lacing on the back every time I put on the costume. But at least now The long wig will hide the zipper completely. The decorative edge on the neckline of the costume is made with round satin ribbon. It took a lot of measuring to make it look nice.

prototype of the costume.

I fought a lot with these sleeves, but in the end I won!

 Bottom. I wanted to have a dimension on the flappety flaps, so they each have 4 darts. To make the flappetyflaps stay nicely on their place there is wire on the lacing. Two of the flappety flaps had upside down crosses on them and I made them embroiding iridescent white thread instead of just painting them on. I think it adds nice touch to the costume.

flappety flaps and top in the making

trying it on

making the crosses

underskirt. The underskirt was simple to make. It is a rectangle with gathered longer rectangle on the bottom. There is an elastic waistband.

Getting there...

 Accessories and shoes. The headdress is roundish shape with rose on the middle. There is also ribbon and the edges are made with round satin ribbon. It stays on with alligator clips.

 I used the same shoes I had in the Iteza gogo kuji don't be late Sheryl. I added some decorations, that can be taken off, so I can use the same shoes for two costumes.

wings were made from wire, fabric and bunch of rooster feathers. I might redo the wings some day and make them bigger and change the shape a little.

Basic shape for the wings.

Feathers added to both sides

Trying those wings on.

All the pieces done, now let's put it on

And here's the finished results. This costume is so hard to photograph since it has black and white.

Asuna Yuuki - School uniform

I have never in my 10 years of cosplaying done school uniform, so it was about time to make one. This was quick and easy cosplay to make. And for the first time I used ready-made pattern (though I had to alter them a bit).  I was debating whether I should make the winter version or the summer version. I ended up making kind of both: I made the shirt according the summer uniform and jacket according to winter uniform. The winter uniform has long sleeved shirt underneath so, it isn't 100% match with short sleeved shirt, but it's good enough for me.

I had already most of the fabrics and other accessories needed to finish this costume. I only had to buy zipper and fashion fabric for the skirt and jacket. The jacket and skirt are cotton with polyester lining. The material of the shirt is most likely polyester, but because I used old fabric I had, I can't say for sure.

materials for the jacket and skirt

jacket. The jacket was easy to make. I added interfacing to the collar, sewed all the pieces together added satin ribbon details and added interfacing. Then all there was left to do was to make buttonholes and sew buttons and the jacket was done.

Here's how the cut pieces of fashion fabric looked like

Ironing side seams 

Jacket without sleeves and lining

sleeves need stripes

Lining pieces for the jacket

Finished jacket with the shirt.

skirt. I made the patterns for the skirt myself. The skirt is fully lined. The skirt is basically made out of many rectangles. There is a zipper on the size and the buttons on the front are just for decoration.

skirt pieces

shirt. For the shirt I had pattern, so I saved myself from making those. The fabric I used was quite sheer, so I used two layers of fabric for the upper front and back pieces. I had barely enough of fabric, so I made the shirt about 5 cm shorter than I would have otherwise.

There was interfacing added to the collar and couple of decoration ribbons. At this point the collar looked like a Finnish flag.

almost finished shirt

badge. I made two badges, one for the jacket and one for the shirt. I used suede fabric that I painted gold and embroided the gold bird looking details. I think that these badges ended up looking great!

Finished badge to be sewn on the jacket

And here's how the finished outfit looked. I still haven't had proper photoshoot for the costume, so please excuse the quality of the photos.

Felix argyle

Question of the day: Is it crossplay, if you are a female cosplaying a male that looks and dresses like a female? Whatever it is, Felix was kind of an odd choice of cosplay for me. I usually tend not to cosplay males just because often find myself liking the girl characters and their outfits more and thus wanting to cosplay them. And I don't even like blue as a color, that is the most used color in Felix's outfit. But something about the design of the costume and Felix as a character hit me hard. It may have been the lilac lining, big bows and stripes. But honestly, I think that the biggest reason for me to fell for this costume was the cat ears. So, Let's start this costume with them.

Left ear ready to be cut from craft foam

ears. I first made the pattern from paper. A lot of cutting taping and fitting was involved in this process. Once I was happy with the pattern I traced it to craft foam, cut it and glued the slits/seams together. To make it hold the shape, I glued wire to the bottom of the ear. To hide the wire I glued baby pink felt to the inside of the ears. 

 After this part came the most time consuming part- making the fluffs. I had wool thread (acrylic would have been better, but I couldn't find one in right shade of brown). I combed them open with a brush and then used hair straightener to flatten them. After that it was time to make wefts by gluing all the wefts. When the glue was dry I trimmed the edges nice and attached the wefts to the ears. Trimming the wefts was done after all the wefts were on place.

Threads waiting to be combed

Drying wefts

wefts attached to the ear

 

tail. For the tail I used same technique, but instead of using glue I made a knot to the middle of the thread before combing, so I could sew them to the core of the tail. This way it is more durable. The core was made from strong wire. then I braided wool thread tightly around the wire. The tail has a elastic waistband.

costume. For the main piece of the costume I used cotton fabrics, that had a little bit of stretch to it.  The lining was some viscose polyester blend. For the details I used satin ribbon and chiffon.

Fabrics, except white chiffon and cotton.

Patterns for the top were quite interesting to make. I didn't want seam to separate the top and the bottom part too much so I made the center front top panels part of the bottom(skirt) part. That seam would be hidden under the ribbon. The zipper is located center front. Back ribbon was huge to say the least :D

The top part was triangles. I made seam in the middle, and hid it with satin ribbon,

For the bottom part I wanted to add a lot of flare, so I added horsehair braid to the hem. The skirt part is little longer in the back.  The blue skirt is separate and it is just a basic skirt with elastic waste band.

There is a stretch on the back of the costume

The bow is actually zipper. The blue lace was made by myself

Nice hairclip bows

I don't have lot to say about the costume. It was nice to made and I enjoyed making the ears and tail. The bows looked amazing and the costume is nice to wear (except the huge back bow). So here, Have some pictures of me wearing the costume.