Masamune coat test + collar

I've been inspired to work on cosplays the last two days so here's finally more Masamune progress. I really need to work more actively on this.. before I know it it's going to be summer and d'oh! xD Must stop procrastinating.. it's the bane of my existence lol.

First up I took the front upper half coat pattern and pinned it together with the back pattern to see if the neck cut matched with the front's shoulders or not. It didn't.

After I cut them to fit

After this quick fix I did a prototype version of the coat's upper half of some scrap fabric we had at home. Nothing special, just cut out the pieces needed.

 Because this is just a kind of test, to see how the real thing will fit/look, I didn't bother to zigzag or do anything except sew the shoulder seams and side seams closed with a simple straight stitch. This is just a scrap test anyway, just to see how well my self-made patterns work or not when assembled.
After I had sewn what was neccessary to hold the thing together it looked like this. Not too bad.. if I do say so myself.

Face censor ftw.
The two pins are there as collar markers.

The shoulders will need some hardcore interfacing on the real coat to stay up like on the reference but the form seems to be otherwise quite alright.

Next up was time to figure out the collar. It took some thinking before I felt sure enough to draft a pattern. The pattern looked like this:

But the collar would need to have a strip of extra fabric added to the front, extending towards the coat's opening. Masamune's collar kind of starts already on the coat's V-shaped front and folds a bit out. I don't know how to explain clearly what I mean but on this anime pic it's pretty obvious:

So I went and took the front pattern piece, pinned it along the curve to a small piece of pattern paper and drew out the curve. I put the collar pattern temporary on top for reference and to get the starting point (aka 11 cm from the collar's middle) right.

After that I pinned the collar pattern (it's only half pattern, will be cut at the fabric fold) along with the extension piece to the test coat, to see if it would sit like I had imagined. Of course I pinned the collar's "end" (actually middle point) to the middle back of the coat and then just pinned along the neck curve and when I got to the front I pinned the extension piece along the coat's front curve. It sat really well.. I was surprised haha.

Straight...

.. and slightly folded.

Green lights! Time to cut out a prototype collar for the coat to see if it works as well with fabric..

As you see I just sew the collar on with a straight stitch just like the shoulder and side seams earlier.
No need to do extra work.

It looked something like this when worn after being sewn on:

Not half bad. The collar is a bit too wide but otherwise it seems to work.
Super floppy fabric though, so the real collar will need interfacing too.

 The prototype coat looks like this when on a flat surface:

I took the collar pattern and made it a little bit less wide.. I don't want a huge Dracula collar lol.

Drew a line with a pencil where I will cut

After fixing the size. Put it over the collar for comparison.
(prototype collar has about 1 cm seam allowance though)

That's all progress for today.. ~

Kenshin wig + Masamune chainmail brainstorming

Remember my Cosplay Challenge from earlier this year? Well, some few days ago I received the wig I ordered for a future Kenshin cosplay. I bought it because the site had a sale and I just couldn't pass it up.. and I already know pretty dang sure that I will end up wanting to cosplay Kenshin anyway after I've read the manga and/or watched the anime. It's just one of those series I've been highly interested in for years (I'm a samurai/history/kimono/sword geek.. how can I not be interested in Rurouni Kenshin when it's such a praised classic?) and.. I just need to start reading/watching it. I plan to do it soon enough. *looks at the 5 first volumes of the manga in my bookshelf that has been there for over a year now*

Kenshin Himura

The wig looks like this right out of the bag and I must say ME GUSTA MUCHO!! <3

Just looking at this wig makes me so excited to read/watch Rurouni Kenshin haha. I love how I pretty much already happen to have everything I need for a blue kimono version Kenshin cosplay except the reverse blade katana. You all can be pretty sure I will do it next year ~

And now over to Masamune. I've been wondering about one part of the costume for quite some time.. namely the chainmail.

Masamune Date reference

As you can see he has chainmail covering his arms. Well, I surely don't have the time, money, knowledge nor the dedication to make my own chainmail from scratch.. at least not right now. It would take months and be very tedious.. I don't have that much time to put on a single part of the costume which isn't even that noticeable. So I thought about cheaper, less heavy (chainmail weights a ton, no lie. lol) and faster options.. I read around on the internet and found that you could buy a knitted shirt and spraypaint it silver. It would only look believable from a distance though. Seemed like a good idea until I realized it would likely be way too hot to wear during the summer time (main con season) and probably too bulky too. Then I remembered seeing in mom's fabric attic this one fabric that looks like.. silvery netting or something; I don't know what its proper name is. But I thought maybe it could work if I backed it up with some silvergray-ish base. The problem was that mom's version of that fabric had too big "holes" so it wouldn't look right even if I folded/layered it double...
So uhm, today I went to Eurokangas after school. I saw that there was a 20% sale on all fabrics currently and there I found this same type of netting fabric although with smaller "holes", more dense. Bingo! Truth is, I had seen it before but didn't buy it because I wasn't sure back then...

the net fabric in question

I just hope that this idea will work and look as nice in reality as it seems to do in my head. I bought half a meter of it, I hope that's enough... I'm not good at calculating how much fabric I need. xD

That's all for today. I really need to progres further on Masamune the coming days.. I've planned to do a mock-up test of the coat's upper half to see how it sits before cutting the parts out of the real fabric. Oh well, stay tuned for more updates!

Masamune Date - upper half coat patterns

Drew and cut out the patterns for Masamune's coat today, the upper half of it. Mom has been inspired to sew clothes for herself the last few weeks (she's a former fabric store owner and sewer after all~) and now she had been planning to make some kind of vest-like garment and after she had cut out her patterns I went and looked at it and thought "hey this could maybe work for Masamune if I modify it a bit!" BOOM said and done!

Good reference for the coat's upper half

So I first took mom's back piece pattern, went to get the pattern paper roll and pinned it in place. After some thinking and staring at references I figured that it's mostly the shoulder part that will need modifying on the back piece. So I curved the shoulder upwards and then cut it out.

Modifying shoulders

Back piece pattern cut out

Then I took the newly cut out back pattern, pinned it in place and drew out the front pattern with the same shoulders and width and stuff. I just modified the front to have a curved V-shape in the middle.

After I had drawn out the lines and was about to cut out the front piece

Front piece pattern cut out

I will need to use interfacing fabric to get the shoulders to stay up like that as well as the collar.. which I haven't made the pattern for yet. I tried the patterns on and it seems like they will work quite well. I lucked out on the measurements too because that lower half's pattern (aka spiky buttcape) is 100 cm wide from tip to tip and this coat pattern was by default 25 cm wide on the front and the back of course 50 cm because it will be cut from the fabric's fold. Perfect. I didn't even plan to get them to match up like this when I started planning out the lower half's pattern some days ago. xD Voittajafiilis!!

Plastic for armormaking

So some month or so ago I ordered a white matte polystyrene sheet from Etra store in town. I went and picked it up today when I finally got the chance to. I can't remember its measures or thickness right now but it's pretty thin, not super thin though. I've never worked with plastic before but I decided to give it a go now.. I hope that after all the research I've done that it will work for making Masamune Date's armor. At least based on what I found it seems like a material with good qualities for armormaking.. but we'll see when I start working with it.

The polystyrene is rolled up inside this blue protection thingy.

Just to show how big it is
(yes, I'm wearing kimono just because I can. Yes, mirror photo)

That's it for today. Hopefully I will do some Masamune cosplay progress this weekend.

Masamune Date - lower half coat pattern

Decided to start working on my Masamune Date cosplay for real, my big "projektarbete" for school. I already have the wig and eyepatch but now I need to start making the costume itself. Again, this will be the default armor version and currently I plan to do the game version, which is slightly more detailed than the anime counterpart, but I might end up doing some kind of game-anime hybrid version. We'll see. xD

I didn't get so much done today but I managed to draw and cut out the pattern for the lower half of the coat.  I did it all by myself after a lot of measuring and planning. It took me pretty much 2 hours.. It looked surprisingly good after I test-wrapped it around my waist. I was pretty sure at one point I would screw it up but luckily it seems like I didn't.

Lower half coat pattern cut out

I'm going to make it in an upper and lower part with a seam that will likely be hidden by the belt. Me and mom figured it might be easier that way and I wouldn't get any side seams on the "buttcape" part. lol buttcape~

Oh, and I used this as a reference:

It's from some kind of reference sheet for the anime.
A godsend for cosplayers haha ~

I know it's the anime version but it's much easier to find good references from the anime..
As I said I will aim on doing the game version when it comes to those finer details and colors and stuff. I will probably use the base references from what is easily available (aka anime references) and then, when working, compare the game and anime versions with each other and then modify accordingly so that my costume looks more like the game variant when finished.

I hope that now when I started working on this cosplay that I will keep the fire burning until it's finished because I have just about half a year of time left to finish it, document the progress and show my project supervisor what I've done. I should have started this earlier but I'm a procrastinator and had some other issues and I know that this is quite the challenge so I can't sit still and do nothing with the time I have left. Neither can I take on any other cosplay project (unless it's super-mega-easy or some wafuku cosplay..) alongside this now until I've progressed a lot further.
MASAMUNE, YOU ARE GOING TO GET DONE BEFORE SUMMER VACATION.

A new wig + fabric for Masamune

So today I went to the post office after school and picked up two packages. It was a white juban and a new wig I will use for season 2 (aka short hair version) Hijikata from Hakuouki. Funny thing is I was searching for a Hijikata specific wig but didn't find anything I thought looked just right so I wondered "what other characters have a similar hairstyle as Hijikata?" and BOOM instantly Sebastian Michaelis from Kuroshitsuji popped into my mind.

Sebastian Michaelis - Kuroshitsuji (aka Black Butler)

I found a Sebastian wig I thought looked really nice and it wasn't very expensive either so I bought it for Hijikata. Now I must admit there is something about Kuroshitsuji which captures my interest; I've been feeling for quite some time now that  I want to watch it even though it's rather mainstream. Also I heard from Sairu-chan not so long ago that she already has a Ciel cosplay and a Kuroshitsuji cosplay group planned with her friends who live around northern Finland. Group cosplays are always great so that is even more a reason to watch Kuroshitsuji so I could hang around with them in some northern con.. not to mention I've always liked Sebastian's design - red eyes me gusta mucho!!, hairstyle, "penguin coat" lol (seriously I want a coat like that.. if I do him a get a reason to make one hohoho~) and yeah, there just is something interesting about him. If I now watch Kuroshitsuji and end up liking Sebastian I will do him, I would already have the wig too and I need to buy red contacts anyway *coughrasetsucough* so I would get more use out of them also. XD We will see ~

I tried the wig on quickly (read: no cosplay make-up) after I got home. At first I was all "not sure if gusta" but after I arranged the fibers around a bit it was rather awesome.

I also went to Eurokangas with mom before getting home and she bought me some fabric for Sengoku Basara's Masamune Date cosplay. I will use this fabric for the coat and pants.

Masamune reference

The fabric is some kind of denim with 5% elastane and it has this.. interesting touch to the surface; a bit like it would have a thin coat of some kind of plastic on it. It is also a bit heavier and drapes rather well. I think it will be great for Masamune's coat especially. I just really need to start working on this cosplay for real; it needs to be done and documented before next summer vacation I'm going to die. If you remember it was a school project so it's really important I get this done in time before I graduate.

Masamune's eyepatch

I've been away from home, as you might have figured already, but now I'm back and thus this blog is brought back to life again with the most recent cosplay updates. So Animecon (Kuopio, Finland) is soon around the corner and the only thing keeping my cosplays from being 100% ready for the con is Masamune's eyepatch. Well, I was bored today so I decided to make it and get it out of the way ~

First of all I needed a reference. I had already saved myself a good screenshot from the anime so I could start working ASAP.

hurr hurr

But before I could start working I needed to climb to our attic where mom currently stores all her leftover fabric and sewing supplies. I remembered yesterday I had asked about black elastic and she had said there should be lots of it in different sizes visible as soon as you get up there. So yeah, I dragged my ass up there and when I was up I noticed a cardboard box lying on the floor. I opened it and was flooded with lots of zippers. Yeah. But because I didn't see anything else that could hold elastic bands in it I dug deeper into the box and then I saw a whole roll of white elastic. "Cool, but not the right color.." I thought. Dug some more and found a black one... and another... and another... and then I probably looked like this:

I went back inside á la herpy derp and could start working. I took with me two rolls because I wasn't sure which width I preferred. I ended up using the wider one.

Mom I love you. <3 lol

Cut off a fitting length

Now I will just show photos of the rest of the progress because I'm lazy ~ 

and my twin wants to play Mario Party 4 with me lol

I made a (fail) test version first to check size...

... and then started making the real one. (craft foam)

Some trimmings later...

Cut out a second layer of the same size (lol Masamune secretly likes Sweden...)

I started painting 'em black... dries so slow...

FUCK YEAH HAIR DRYER!!1

Three coats of paint, black fingers and some glue later I had made myself this:

I did do a quick try-on.. but soon found myself getting high on glue fumes and my eye twitching. So yeah, need to let it dry completely before I go take preview photos trolololo ~

"Projektarbete" change

So today after school I went and checked if my former Swedish teacher was still at her working room. She is one of my two supervisors (normally you only have one supervisor.. but I'm trololo so I have two, my art teacher being the other one) for this one big "projektarbete" (project work) every student has to do during the 3rd and final year of "gymnasiet" or "lukio" for you Finns. Upper secondary school for ages 16-19. So well, due to personal reasons I will go a 4th year in school and that means I'll also get an extra year to do this project work. It's a big task, you chose one thing you want to work with (it's pretty free but it has to connect to the program you've chosen to go in some way) that you have to work on independently and I think you got around one year to finish it. We got to choose what teacher we wanted as our supervisor too.

- Wait. Why am I telling you all this boring non-cosplay crap you ask?

Well, I'll come to that now. Me, being the herpderpgeek I am decided one year ago I wanted to do something unique as my project work. Something I would feel inspired to work on instead of the opposite. So I asked my supervisor if I could do a costume... yes, a cosplay costume... and it was a yes. Yay. Actually my supervisor (aka former Swedish teacher) has an interest in Japan and I've been showing her some of my cosplays before with positive feedback, haha. My art teacher, the second supervisor, used to be my sewing teacher in "grundskolan" ("peruskoulu" in Finnish, nine-year compulsory school) as well as my art teacher for many years so she has been helping me sewing original character clothes years ago. xD

Okay, so this all is old stuff. But what is new is that today, as I said in the beginning of this blog post, I visited my supervisor. I asked her if it was possible for me to change the chosen character because I had not started working on the costume properly yet and because I already had other cosplay plans set for this year (and some for 2013 even) and I probably wouldn't have time to work on this "project work cosplay" between the other ones. So the former character was Kai from the Luminous Arc game and the new one is... Masamune Date from Sengoku Basara. Yes, that armor version I mentioned earlier I'll do for Porukka Kasaan!'s Sengoku Basara cosplay group next year. It was a good move to switch because now I can kill two birds with one stone. I'll need to cosplay Date anyway because I signed up for the group and now it's also my school work. Now I will really have to do the armor version for the group and get it done too, if not by anything else then by school pressure. Yeah, damn sweet.

So my plans went from this...

... to this:

I'm perfectly sane. :'DDD lolnope

And I will do Kai someday, just not now.