Sakura - Wig, Hat & Accessories - Cardcaptor Sakura

Part 3 of Sakura (1st Opening outfit)--lets talk accessories! The details are really what make this costume. If you want to see how I made the wings, go here! If you want to see the rest of the outfit, go here!

I entered this costume in the Friday night Workmanship Competition at Anime North in 2014 and won an award for Best Accessories in my category. That was pretty cool. It was my first (and so far only) time entering in a competition without a stage presentation component.

Once again, thanks to EleventhPhotograph for the photoshoot. I really love this black and white shot.

First we'll talk about the wig. I started with EpicCosplay's Aura in cocoa brown. I think this colour works really well for Sakura, it's not too brown or too blonde. It's almost a bit reddish. I think the colour works well on both my sister and myself.

Since I was doing a costume of hers with a hat, I didn't bother to add her iconic pigtails that she normally wears, because they wouldn't be visible. This has influenced my costume choices for my subsequent Sakura costumes to only be ones where Sakura is wearing a hat. Because this means I don't have to go back and fix the wig. And also because her costumes with hats are ridiculously cute.

As you can see the wig was pretty long. I purposefully picked a longer wig because she has those two small sections of longer hair in front of her ears. It is much easier to cut a wig shorter than it is to add in longer wefts.

I started by trimming the bangs. Using clips I separated off the different sections of the hair. The longer pieces were separated from the sides and the bangs. I left the long wisps at the original length, and simply thinned them out a bit. The sides were thinned and layered and trimmed to length. Then I trimmed the back of the wig.

The last step was to style the front of the wig to give the top that volume. I pulled sections of the hair up and hair sprayed them at the base. Then I used a blow dryer to set it. I made some shorter bits stick up while the rest parted and fell to each side. This created the look of her cute bob at the front.

Next I started work on the hat. Since I had very limited pink fabric left, I made a mockup. The hat's construction was pretty simple. The pattern consisted of a circle and a rectangle. The rectangle was the length of the circle's circumference.

First I rolled over the channel where the elastic would go later and ironed that. I didn't stitch it down yet, but pre-ironing saved me a ton of headaches later.

The next step was to sew the rectangle to the top of the hat, right sides together. Then I sewed the two ends of the rectangle together and then top stitched the channel for the elastic. I left an opening in the channel so I could feed the elastic through. The elastic both gathered the hat and helped it to stay on. When I was satisfied with the fit, I sewed the elastic ends together and closed the channel opening.

Lastly the bow was attached to the hat. Credit for completing the finishing touches goes to my friend Alli who handcrafted all the bows and hand stitched them on.

Instead of constructing socks and gloves I bought them, and made ruffles to add to them to help them match the rest of the costume.

Like the hat band, the ruffles are simply rectangles with a channel on on side for an elastic, which cinches them to fit and gathers them into a ruffle. These were tacked on to the gloves and socks.

Little red bows were also added to the gloves.

The shoes were an extremely lucky find. I managed to find flats at Ardene's in the perfect shade of red. They matched my red fabric perfectly. I added the bows to the toe. This is not 100% accurate to the design, but I didn't feel like adding straps to the shoe--I was worried it would make them uncomfortable. The bows were hot glued on.

I paid attention to the details so that everything would match perfectly. I wanted to do Sakura justice, and I think I achieved that. :)

Sakura - Dress, Blouse & Petticoat - Cardcaptor Sakura

So guys, it finally happened: I finally got some finished shots of this costume. Special thanks to EleventhPhotograph for the amazing fall shoot! I loved the use of colour gels in the trees to pump up the colour even more!

You may have already guessed that I have a slight obsession with the 90s series CardCaptor Sakura. It was the first anime I ever watched in Japanese with subtitles. The numerous other CCS costumes should have clued you in to my obsession at this point.

I've already made Suppi & Kero, Sakura's sailor suit, and Tomoyo. Adding this one and the one I am currently working on, that brings my total up to 6 costumes from the same series. Which is kind of crazy. Although, not all of these costumes are for me. Suppi was for my older sister Alex, and this iconic Sakura outfit was made for my lovely sister Elanne.

It may not be totally apparent that my sister is actually 7 years younger than me (we have been told on numerous occasions that we look like twins...), but this means that she was not old enough/actually alive to watch the series with me in the 90s. She only watched it for the first time about 3 years ago when Alex and I were having a nostalgia trip. And she quickly became a fan. She hadn't cosplayed in a few years, but asked me if I would consider making something CCS for her. How could I refuse? And behold, the cutest Sakura I know!

So lets get started talking about how I made the dress, blouse and petticoat!

This is definitely one of the most iconic Sakura outfits, this one is featured in the season 1 opening theme. Fabric shopping proved a bit of a challenge for this costume, as I had difficulty finding the correct colour of pink. Because the dress is pink, not red, as some people make it--though that may be to better match one of the manga illustrations? I don't know. It's a reddish/salmon-y/flamingo-ish pink depending on which reference picture you look at. The fabric I found was a medium salmon-y pink colour. When compared to the red fabric I already had on hand for the bow details it had a nice contrast and the colours looked good together. Which is an important part of colour matching any costume.

The most difficult thing about CLAMP is that the way they draw their CCS designs is so simple. They look simple. But they aren't. My main issue is that they don't typically draw seams onto the clothes. This can make it extraordinarily difficult to determine how exactly the clothes should be constructed.

I started off by patterning a basic block, which I heavily modified to create the pattern for the bodice.

The skirt is a full circle and a half. It has been too long since for me to explain the mathematics of how I did that. It consists of 3 panels which are 1/2 of a circle each. This is so I can have a seam down the center back for the zipper, but not one down the center front (which I think looks bad).

I cut out my pieces and then began assembling it.

The bodice was designed not to be super fitted to her curves in spite of having a princess seam--Sakura is supposed to be like 10, so emphasizing curves does not really emulate the character accurately. But not having the seam would have made the bodice gape weirdly at the armholes. Also, it couldn't be too fitted, because there were several layers going underneath: the wing rig being the bulkiest, but also the blouse and the petticoat waistband. If it was super fitted she would look lumpy. Sakura is not lumpy.

I finished the seams on the inside.

You can see how full the skirt is as it hangs. This is what the skirt looks like without the petticoat underneath. Pretty sad and not floofy. I always think it looks so sad when a character is supposed to have a giant floofy skirt and cosplayers aren't wearing a petticoat. :( Sometimes it's understructure that can make or break a costume.

Next I added a zipper into the center back seam. Next I finished the edge of the neckline with a facing. This was tacked down on the inside to keep it from flapping about.

Next I made a facing for the armholes. This was also tacked to the inside.

Next the stripe was added to the bottom of the dress with a pale yellow bias tape, and the dress was hemmed.

Special thanks must go to my wardrobe gnome Alli, who helped me with finishing up this dress. She did 99% of the hand stitching on this costume. Which included hand basting the yellow bias tape stripe along the bottom edge and the hem (as well as making and attaching all of the bows!). This was so I could machine stitch it with absolute precision (and no wrinkles later. Hand basting is one of those tasks I loathe doing, even though it can be super helpful.

Here you can see I have tested out the dress with 1 layer of the petticoat. Even then I decided I would need almost 3 times as much floof. And even still, I feel I could have done 1 more layer.

Simultaneously I was making the blouse. It started off as the same basic block, but the similarities end there. For the top front portion of the blouse (that would be revealed by the neckline of the pink dress) I created a panel that was wider than the center front piece below by about 2 inches. I gathered  this panel along the bottom edge and neckline so that it would appear ruffled along the center front. The rest of the blouse was fitted, so there wouldn't be too much added bulk under the dress.

The collar is simply a long rectangle of fabric folded in half lengthwise. It was made long and gathered to fit the neck hole. Again, this costume is nothing but ruffles, ruffles, and more ruffles.

For the back closure I decided to make it button up, because it looked adorable. Although it was a bit of a challenge for her to take on and off, she managed!

The sleeve took a few tries to get the correct proportion of poof. They are larger than the sleeve hole and gathered to fit.

The sleeve cuffs were done in the same way as the collar.

The last step in the project was the petticoat. It is surprisingly labour intensive to make one. With this I used up all the crinoline I had left from when I bought it for my Alice petticoat.

After determining how long I wanted it to be, I cut as many strips as I could of crinoline in each width I needed. I sewed these together, with french seams.

Much like layer cakes, petticoats are easiest to construct from the bottom up. You make the bottom tier first--finish the hem, ruffle it along the top edge--then attach it to the tier above and repeat until you get to the waistband. You make each layer separately.

You can see that each layer in this petticoat has 2 tiers of crinoline--a small one at the waistband. This was to cut down on the already substantial bulk that would have to be sewn into the waistband.

To finish the bottom hem, I created a strip of broadcloth to fold over the bottom edge. This created the look I wanted for the bottom visible edge. While still having the structure that crinoline provided. Making the petticoat entirely out of broadcloth would have been far too flimsy.

To give you an idea of just how much fabric this is: the petticoat can stand on its own. This is only 2 layers, this is before I decided to make a third.

After making layer number 3, I also made a simple white circle skirt (1 full circle) to go over top of it. Like the blouse I made a ruffle to add along the bottom edge. This was long enough so it would be visible below the edge of the skirt.

To give you some perspective, this is how much petticoat I put into this costume. And I could have done more. I would probably have used a stiffer crinoline layer.

This one is 3 layers of crinoline, plus a white circle skirt with a ruffle along the edge over top.

The completed dress looked pretty good!

Inkling - Outfit & Accessories - Splatoon

This is the first post on our Splatoon Squad--affectionately referred to by the group as "Squids or Kids?". What was supposed to be a group of easy casual cosplays quickly snowballed into a crazy colossal effort to make the most awesome Inkling costumes possible. Special thanks (and photo credit) to Elemental for doing the group photoshoot! All of the pics from the shoot were wonderful!

The current group from the photoshoot consisted of: Brian (Ragz Cosplay) --the brains of the operation; Andy (Yavarice) --our task manager; Michelle (Mage Cosplay) --a heat n' bond wizard; Kim --the only one who can actually has the power to create vector files; and myself--the squid hat pioneer. Special thanks also to our fellow squids--the wig expert Louise and magical wizard Adrien--for all their hard work as well! We look forward to them joining us for Squids 2.0. :) There will most likely be a second shoot at some point in the future, with even more Kids. Or Squids?

Obviously since this is a large group cosplay there is a certain amount of tasks that were shared or delegated so that everyone's costume would match! I will do my best to generally explain how things came together, but obviously credit goes to the individuals who made each specific thing!

For the clothes we all set about creating our own outfits. I tried to keep the base items I bought on the cheap side.

Since the Inklings all wear a standard pair of black biking shorts with a stripe their team colour down the side, we all found black leggings/bike shorts to modify.

For my shorts, I bought a pair of black leggings at Ardenes for about $10. I marked how short I wanted them, then cut off the excess. I topstitched a stripe of green spandex down the side of each leg using a zig-zag stitch--so it would allow the fabric to stretch. Then I hemmed the pants.

We all opted for t-shirts in varying colours with one of the various logos from the game on them. In the game the clothes you can buy have different brands to choose from, and each brand has a unique logo. For those of us who decided to create our logos with heat transfer paper, Kim vectored and resized the designs. Those of us with inkjet printers printed the logos onto heat transfer paper. (Which I believe was purchased at Michael's?) Those were then applied to the shirts using an iron.

I bought my t-shirt in chinatown for $2. I think other people bought theirs at Walmart. I also got a green hoodie at H&M to match my costume--in case it was cold. Brian layered his shirt over a long sleeved shirt.

For the coloured tags on the shirt we each used a rectangle of our own team colour fabric and used a small version of our logo applied with heat transfer paper. Then we used heat n bond to attach the tags to our shirts.

Mage actually created her adorable squid shirt logo entirely with heat n bond to appliqué the design on in the different coloured fabrics pieces. I think it turned out really awesome! She also made several of the simpler tags (like the one on my hoodie) in this method. She is a heat n' bond wizard.

Accessories allowed us to personalize the costumes a bit more. We looked like a cohesive group, but the accessories gave our characters personality. For example: Andy wore goggles, Kim had headphones, Michelle had hair clips, and Brian wore glasses and a headband. In a lot of cases, we would find a colourful item for cheap and then slap a logo on it. Hahaha

For shoes, I got a pair of $14 high tops at Ardenes that I stenciled a logo on using fabric paint. I tried to make my accessories have a colour theme--which was pink. We had a group field trip to Walmart one night to pick up some accessories. We got some packs of brightly coloured shoe laces there, so I was able to swap out the boring white ones that came with my shoes for a pair of neon pink ones! Other members of the group picked up their brightly coloured running shoes at Walmart. I don't think anyone spent more than $30 on shoes.

I picked up a pair of bright pink headphones in chinatown for about $20. So I wouldn't have to worry about making any pointed ears for the costume, which we made a group decision later to forgo anyway. I wish the headphones I bought were a little bigger, but I wasn't willing to spend any more on them. I may mod them at some point. Perhaps for Squids 2.0?

The masks were our solution to not having to paint large areas of our eyes black. A friend of of the group put together an easy superhero mask tutorial, which you can find here! These masks are lightweight and can be spirit gummed directly to your face, or tied on. Andy made my mask for me, and it looks awesome, but unfortunately the felt backing seems to irritate my eyes a lot. :( I am going to look into alternative materials to make the same thing, because I really liked the look of the costume with the mask. Next time I am definitely going to fill in the area around my eyes with black makeup, though.

Stay tuned for part 2!

Cloche Hat with Kanzashi

Today is a short entry about a project I did for school! The goal was to change the shape of an existing felt hat using steam, and decorate it. I created a 1920s inspired cloche hat that I decorated with kanzashi flowers. Pretty cute right? ;D

For doing this it is very important that the hat is 100% wool, otherwise it won't really work. I found this nondescript black hat at H&M for about $25.

I cut off most of the brim, and from the cutaways I created the second brim layer. Using a tea kettle I let the hat steam and continued to stretch it by hand and over a metal bowl to change the shape. I did this until I was happy with it/the crease was gone. Then I hand stitched brim #2 on, then I wired the edge.  I finished the inside with a gros grain ribbon. This is so the hat wouldn't stretch later.

Once that was done I began to create the decorations. I found this great tutorial on making kanzashi flowers--Japanese style folded flowers. Using the same method I folded the leaves as well. It's basically like origami for fabric.

I finished the edge of the hat with a bias tape I had in my scrap bin.

I finished them by adding a couple of beads to the center, then I sewed them to the hat. I had a lot of fun making them and they turned out pretty great. I got the fabric when I was in Tokyo this past winter.

Then I had a cute hat to hand in! And to wear later! ;D