Be Good Siera-Butt

Whenever someone's new to cosplay, it's often advised for them to start by modifying pre-bought garments to suit the character. But whether you've been in the hobby for 4 months or 4 years (or more!), I still think it's a viable option for any skill level. Altering garments can range from adding small adornments, to completely re-making something, like I did in the latter part of last year!


For a Vocaloid PV, I was thinking I would have to make my first kimono. But, after searching for materials, I came across the perfect yukata for just $20 - a fraction of what the fabric would've cost me.


However, Rin's yukata has a small white edge on the tomoeri (collar protector), so I grabbed some white fabric that I had laying around, folded over the longest side and then pickstitched it into place. It was important to handsew this because it was a temporary amendment, and I didn't want to damage the fabric. If you're not confident with handsewing, there's also a range of tapes on the market specifically for altering the lengths of pants, skits, sleeves etc.


Finished product! Not that much different, but an alteration all the same!


Now, this modifcation's a bit more major. I picked up this half-finished silk wedding dress a few years ago from a bargain bin. It was only about $10-15 and I didn't have any plans for it, but figured that if nothing came up, I could still use the fabric. After talking to Shona, we decided to cosplay Cendrillon together, and I'd nearly forgotten all about the dress!


So I made a calico mockup and unpicked all the (handsewn!) seams. Not much room for error, is there? I had just enough fabric from the bubble-y bodice of the dress. If it'd been any other style, it wouldn't have worked. Because of the fragile nature of the silk, I also had to reinforce it with interfacing.


Now the fun part! Seeing Mon do lots of lace and applique work, I definitely wanted to try some of my own. It was really fun creating my own patterns, and I'm very lucky to have picked a lace where the designs were mirrored, because it definitely wasn't something I was looking for when I bought it. I was a little worried about the different whites, but the satin binding I used ended up matching the lace's white, so it worked out great!


The finished product! After I was done with the bodice, I just had to create a few accesories, re-attatch the skirt and put a zip down the back. The feathered shoulders were made from gluing feathers from another project onto some shoulder pads before then handsewing them onto the straps. The waist sash was also really simple - a rectangle of one-way stretch fabric that I put some boning into so that it'd add more definition to the waist.


Back view - I'm really in love with the dress' train! It has such a gorgeous shape.


Bodice details. I added some pearls along the satin bias, and little fake roses at the intersection of the straps and bodice. I'd love to have done some beading on the lace work, but ran out of time!


And my headband! The base was a Spotlight find, and all the flowers were glued onto a piece of fabric before being attached to the headband.


And lastly, how the costumes ended up in their respective photoshoots - not too bad at all!

Long time no blog! I've had a severe lack of motivation, but after being greatly flattered by the fact that this blog still gets daily hits, I'm going to try and give it another go! So here's to 2012!

Though ironically, I'm going to start with the last con from 2011 - Madman/BrisNova2. It was my first year not competing in the finals, which was okay because it was also my birthday! I cosplayed one of my favourite things, Cirque du Soleil! Specifically, the White Singer from Alegría.

Our group all ready and just about to leave.


Making the White Singer was a lot of new challenges, and I knew I wouldn't be able to fully complete her for the con, but hopefully I'll get to make more Cirque costumes in the future.

I didn't take very many photos at the con this year, though there were a lot of amazing cosplayers (and celebrities!) around. I even got to have a photo with Evanna Lynch, and attend a few of the celebrity panels.

At the end of the day, Cathy and Lisa won Madman 2011, and are set to fly off to Japan soon! Their Okami skit (1:17) was amazing, and had so many wonderful aspects to it. They're definitely deserving winners.

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Recently I've taken a bit of a break from cosplay, and a month ago I got this urge to sew something for myself. I started with a scarf, and then I found some fabric that I'd had for a few years. It was given to me by my aunt, uncle and cousins about three years ago at Christmas. It's this lovely maroon and black floral damusk that they'd come by. I always intended to make some beautiful corset with it, but for now, it's become a skirt.

I had a vision in my head of what I wanted it to look like, and making a pattern for it didn't take very long at all. Though mirroring patterns in the fabric on my skirt segments did.

Here the skirt is sewn, and I top stitched all the seams to strengthen them. I didn't want to overlock them as I was using quite heavy fabrics already and didn't want to add to that bulk. I was also trying out how the detailing on the edge of the skirt would look. It's notoriously hard to find nice black lace in Melbourne, though I did manage to find something with a floral pattern that almost echoed the design on the damusk.


Skirt gathered to the re-enforced waistband. It's not obvious, but because I wanted to be able to bustle the back of the skirt, I couldn't put the zip down the centre back, so it's off to a side and the waisband covers this and closes with buttons at the centre back.


I didn't mean to, but I got really lucky with matching patterns in the waistband. And the centre back closure? A complete fluke!


It took a lot of time to pin and sew the bias binding, rose trim and lace around the edge of the skirt, but I'm so glad with how it turned out. And I even got to making a hair accesory to match the skirt!


And here's it worn to a lolita make up event at Illamasqua, with some of the other gorgeous Melbourne lolitas!

I can't even begin to remember how long it's been since I've sewn something like this for myself, so finishing it with (what I consider to be) a high degree of quality, has made me really happy and proud of myself.

I've been meaning to write a tutorial for how I dye wigs for a while, but I haven't quite gotten it down to a fine enough art that I'd want to post it as a tutorial. So, this is more of a 'here's what I use, and what I do, and occasiaonlly it still goes wrong, but it's fun all the same! 8D'

This technique's been used on a lot of my wigs now: Princess Tutu, Marlene and Ari (Okage: Shadow King), Lal Mirch (Katekyo Hitman REBORN!), Madame Red (Kuroshitsuji), Chrome (Katekyo Hitman REBORN!), Gumi (VOCALOID), Sora (Kaleido Star), Chise (Saikano) and Keito (Star Driver). Most of all, I like the natural looking high and low lights it gives, and the ammount of control I have over the shades of colour in the dye.


The ink that I always use is FW Acrylic ink, it's available locally at Eckersley's, or online at numerous craft stores. Ideally, you want to get all of your pigment for your dying from mixing various colours of the inks, however, on occasion I've been able to add a touch of acrylic paint, to help the colour along if I haven't had any ink in the right colour. Though I don't advise making your dye with a majority of paint.


This is nearly everything you need for dying! Your base wig, reference, wig comb, FW ink, rubbing alcohol, spray bottle, paint brush, masking tape, greaseproof paper and GLOVES.

I also advise to do this outside on a sunny day, though you can also do it inside using a hair dryer. This is because the principle is that the rubbing alcohol evaporates leaving the dye in your wig, and the faster this happens, the better.


So grab your ref, and start mixing up the inks. You're going to need quite a lot to get the pigmentation to show through on the wig once it's diluted with rubbing alcohol. Otherwise, it's going to come out a less vibrant colour and appear 'watered down'.

Once the ink is all mixed, you can squeeze the rubbing alcohol into it and mix it in. With the rubbing alcohol, half a bottle will do a short wig, but anything between shoulder or mid-back length, you'll need most, if not a whole bottle. Test our your spray bottle to see if it works, and then pour the ink/alcohol into it. You may need a funnel to help if you're as useless at pouring as I am.


This is how I set myself up outside, use the masking tape to stick some of the greaseproof paper down and onto the ground. This is so you won't get dirt sticks and bugs in your wig, and so you don't end up with random splodges of colour every where too!

Shake up the spray bottle (you'll want it on a fairly large, soft mist) and start dying your wig! It's best to spray a few parts of the wig to see if the colour's coming out as the colour you want it to be. If it isn't, you'll have to add a bit more dye into the spray bottle and shake it up again.

I normally work from the front to the back on one side, before doing the other side, just working my way through the wefts and spraying it onto one side, combing it through, and then doing the other side of the weft - if that makes sense? Particular trouble areas that are harder to dye are the fuzzier fibers around the face, as well as the top of the wig. Once you've done all the wefts close to the base of the wig, you can then start on the rest of the fibers and brushing the dye through them. Once everythings covered, I'll usually leave the wig outside to dry in the sun. But you do have to keep going back to brush it whilst it dries, or else wefts of the wig will dry in clumps together.


After the wig's dried, brush it out again. The fibers will feel quite starchy, but if you were brushing your wig during dying, this should be minimalised. And this is the lovely result! This shade of blue would've been impossible to find in most wig shops, so it was definitely worth doing a custom dye job.


It's always best to dye white (or possibly light silver or blonde) wigs, though I have tinted them darker like my Madame Red wig, here. You can only ever dye wigs darker. It's impossible to lighten them.

It's been a while since I completed this costume (1 1/2 - 2 months?) but it's a project that I enjoyed immensely, and meant to blog about sooner and didn't. I first saw Gumi's Sandplay varient a few months ago, alongside a comment from the artist and designer: "Please feel free to let your own imagination run away with you and alter my designs. As long as you make them as flashy as possible."

So that's what I tried to do with this, and I found making it so enjoyable. Before I started on this project, I was also sorting through my fabrics and supplies and found that I had a lot of the materials that I'd need for this costume already! And keeping costs down on costumes is always enjoyable. XD


Preliminary sketch of the design with notes on closures, fastenings and details.


The blouse toille, pattern and base garment - my parents were only a little mortified at how short this top is? XD;


For the 'fluff' on the sleeves, I cut out a whole bunch of petal-like shapes in various sizes, and then burnt the edges with a lighter to seal the raw edge. It took a while because cigarette lighters aren't really designed to be left on for minutes at a time, but it was definitely worth it - I got received a lot of compliements on the day of how these sleeves turned out. =3


The pattern for the bodice-vest was modified from some of my existing patterns as I had to make it a lot more closer fitting. I also took the chance to play around with my seamlines, and instead of using a normal princess seam, I ran all my shaping seams vertically up to the shoulder. Here is the orginal pattern and the modified toille on black faux seude.


Next up was the bustle! It was a little tricky as Gumi's bustle is shown as having all these pretty decorative ruffled on the inside...as opposed to the outside, where they'd actually be supporting the back of the dress! So here's the inside of the bustle with alternating layers of offcuts from another dress.


And the outside of the bustle with layers of tulle ruffles.


Here's how everything's looking after I'd cut out the back of the skirt.


Bodice progress! I really love the detail around the collar, and I'd just machine sewn on the gold ribbon detail. Unfortunately, all the rest of the sequin and bead trim on this bodice had to be hand sewn on. OTL; I also put the zipper in the front of the garment, so it could be easily covered with the cravat later, whilst still keeping clean lines in the back. (I've also dyed the blouse, which was just done with some off-the-shelf synthetic dyes).


Speaking of the cravat! I played around with a few shapes to get it looking right...and it turned out to be a heart shape, how cute! XD I'd also gone and bought a few plastic 'lace' overlays for tables, and used them as stencils for the gold detail here, and on the bottom of the vest.


The (nearly) finished skirt and blouse on the line drying from purple gradient dye. I think my skirt ended up being 1 1/2 circles, with each layer's hem being re-inforced with fishing wire, and having a supportive tulle layer underneath. I also had to make the waistband of this skirt incredibly form-fitting as it sits so far down on my hips.


Detail on the cravat! I've somehow gotten a lot of beads left over from previous projects, so I did go a bit nuts one night trying to see how many I could get away with putting on this! It's all hand beaded, and I ended up putting a peach sparkle-organza over it to tie it in with the rest of the outfit.

And here's what the outfit ended up looking like on the day!

(I don't think I could show more midriff, even if I tried! D8)
I missed quite a lot of progress, so a few other points:
- the veil is mounted on a headband, and has a layer of sparkle tulle over it
- my gloves were originally white 'driving gloves' from Daiso, that I dyed, and then butchered. The ruffles have more gold bead and sequin trim, as well as sparkle tulle and lace to match the boob ruffles.
- I love the silly lop-sided bow on the skirt, again, I attacked it with sparkle tulle, and the rose at the centre of it was just one that I had lying around from Doll (Kuroshitsuji).
- the peach sparkle organza overlay on the skirt was a lucky buy on the discount table at Spotlight, and just happened to match the blouse and the rest of the outfit pretty well!
- I took a lot of inspiration for detailing from the VisKei band, Versailles. I've had a lot of people say I should make some of their outfits in the past, but I think this is the closest I'll ever get. n_n;

So this is (unfortunately) all there is of this costume so far! I'm waiting for to be able to do a photoshoot, but I'd at least like a Gakupo first. XD