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.

Desucon 2013

Friday:

I didn't cosplay... I was too tired to put a costume on, because I was still making costumes 4 in the fridaymorning... I always end up doing costumes in the last minuteヽ(￣д￣;)ノ 

Saturday:

I was cosplaying Asuna from Sword art online. It was so fun cosplaying her ♡＾▽＾♡ and we managed to take good pictures of the costume :3 so happyy  

Sunday:

I was SnJ Kakashi.. once again XDD

☆☆ASUNA WIP☆☆

I managed to finish the vest-thingie☆☆☆☆  ☆*:.｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆ so happyy

close-up

I'm very pleased with the final result. I like the fabric choice and I like the fact I chose to do those red details from satin ribbon instead of normal cotton ribbon (which doesn't shine). The vest has a hidden zipper at the left side. though if I had to do this again i'd probably put the zipper at the back of the vest. Because now it's a bit hard to put on and if I had bigger head, I wouldn't be able to put it on...

Then I started to do the shoes and breast armor for Asuna. I still haven't finished them, but hopefully next week I'm able to do so.

 I need to put the grey outlines to the armor and also color two crosses grey and attach them to the armor. I might also apply color to the armor itself to make it look not-so-soft XD This is the first armor I have ever made >__< the armor is made out of craft foam. I was happily surprised how easy it is to work with! I'm really looking forward to see how this ends up 

For Asuna's shoes I used some old boots I had lying in my closet. I had once used them in a cosplay, but I hated them so bad. I completely failed to alter the shoes back then and they ended up looking horrible. The white paint was peeling off with every step and (╯ಊ╰) so horrible...

I cut the shoes and made the tip of the shoe a bit rounder. After that I made the pattern for the shoecovers. I pinned some fabric on top of the shoe and drew lines with pencil where the pins were.

First pin the random fabric and then draw the lines

Then you should end up with the patterns :)

Shoes when the shoecovers weren't attached and

 the same shoes when I had sewn them and hot glued the bottom part.

To-Do-List
⌀ make belt
⌀ add lining to the white thing under the vest
⌀ Finish shoes
⌀ Finish armor
⌀stockings
⌀shorten skirt
⌀style wig 
⌀make gloves
⌀make armbands
⌀SWORD!

☆☆Finished☆☆

✓Vest

As you can see I still have a lot to do... ☆￣(＞。☆)  

Sword Art Online - Asuna WIP

Asuna Yuuki

It was at least six months ago (or even longer ago) when my boyfriend suggested that we should cosplay Asuna and Kirito from Sword Art Online. Back then I didn't know anything about SAO and I had to google those characters to know what they looked like. I wasn't that thrilled about their outfits, but I thought I could do it if I liked the anime (I can't cosplay a character if I don't know anything about it, which means I have to watch the anime or read the manga, the character is in, in order to cosplay it.) After I had watch couple episodes of SAO it was clear that my next cosplay was going to be Asuna. I loved the anime and  Asuna's personality (｡♥‿♥｡)

patterns in size 1:4

materials (thin red ribbon not in the picture)

I started with the red skirt, mainly because I already had the fabric for it. (I purchased all the other equipment later) The skirt was normal pleated skirt and I managed to get it done quite fast. The most time consuming thing in the skirt was to iron the pleats. But if I have to mention just one thing I have learned in sewing, it is that ironing makes everything look at least 10 times better (｡･ω･｡) so ironing is a must.

making pleats

Finished skirt !! 

When the skirt was done I started doing the vest part ( I'm not sure if it's a vest put I shall call it that XD) Making a pattern for it was hard, I constantly changed it a little and in the end my patterns were all messy. But at least they worked! 

Ah those messy patterns.

How it looked when I had sewn some red ribbon
(I looked too tired, therefore the duck. DUCKFACE)

All the thick red ribbon in, time for thin red ribbon

BTW it took overall 14 m of red ribbon

the outfit, how it looks and how it should look.

So that's everything I have done so far. next I'm going to make the shoes and armor and add details to the vest (●´∀｀●)