This darn sewing

The start of Ion’s vest! (Trinity Blood). Hopefully it won’t take too long to complete, although I have to handsew on 2m or so of cording, so it probably will take ages ):

Now gonna take a break on Ion and start patterning Sakura’s veil, which I’ve been procrastinating with for ages.

I just counted how many cosplays I’ve done … And it’s only 22. I’ve been cosplaying for what? Five or six years (is it bad I can’t even remember?).

Zexion - Kingdom Hearts
Byakuya - Bleach
Yoite - Nabari no Ou
Lelouch - Code Geass
Jolteon - Pokemon
Colonello - KHR
Pikachu - Pokemon
Maya - Magnacarta
Byakuran - KHR
Miku - Vocaloid
T.K. - Digimon
Lenalee - DGM
Luna - Harry Potter
Eureka - Eureka Seven
Fuko - Clannad
Seychelles - Hetalia
Nezumi - no.6
Shiemi - Ao no Exorcist
Miyoubi - Alichino
Virgo - Starry Sky
Ringo - Uta no Prince Sama
Luki - DOGS

… And I’m pretty sure there are some that I can’t even remember (I dug through laptop photos, FB photos and my wardrobe/drawer to remember |D) I don’t even have photos of half these cosplays OTL.

And then I have quite a few half made cosplays (or bought material or lots). Ones I’ve started: Cooro (+Anima), Mismageus/Jirachi/Lumineon (Pokemon), Magnet Miku/Matroshka Gumi (Vocaloid), Mitsuki (Fullmoon wo Sagashite), Ion (Trinity Blood), Ashura (Tsubasa), Lia (in the making - Le chevalier d’Eon), Taiga (ToraDora), Pinkie Pie (MLP), Zelkova (.hack//GU), and that Touhou chick I can’t remember the name of.

God P: I’ve probably missed ones I’ve started as well.

I wish it was easier to get cosplay photos year-round P: Rather than photoshoot specified days when we get together, lol.

… Don’t get me started on my ‘what I want to cosplay’ list. I might post one later P:

So as my entire Twitter feed would know I’ve been sewing my Lia de Beaumont (Le Chevalier d’Eon) cosplay recently, which if all goes to plan I’ll be wearing to Christchurch Armageddon on July 1st! (Competition day).

I’m having quite a bit of fun sewing this, and using patterns (for once, hurr), so things are going better than expected! (I’ll screw up soon).

All the purple parts are made with taffeta and hell it frays like mad. I learnt this the hard way. I don’t have an overlocker, so I zigzag stitch all the seams and generally I do the two pieces together rather than separately, but I have to zigzag stitch all the pieces immediately after cutting/interfacing otherwise it pretty much disintegrates OTL

So first off! This is the headband thing she has. None of the layers are sewn together yet, haha.

And the neck bow, which was a right pain in the ass to make. The part that goes around the neck was made three times - the first time I forgot to add the ruffles, second time it frayed like mad and it got past the zigzag stitching I did to stop it, so then I made it for a third time and now it works B) The hanging bits of it were a pain to make too ): And you can see one side of ruffles hasn’t been sewn in yet :P

And the bodice! Not much to say apart from lol boob ruffles. I’ve also noticed that a lot of Lia cosplayers don’t add the boob cups, so I made sure to add them. I had to slightly modify a corset pattern’s triangular boob cups to make them more circular, haha.

And the start of one sleeve! Painting a pattern that’s half used from ref pictures and half made up, hurr. None of the ref pics are whole ):

And my sword in its current state! Made with a halloween axe’s plastic dowel thing, expanding foam (which really was a bit of a waste considering how much ended up being left … but it was nice and light), and then the handle bit is a paper mache’d balloon which I cut a hole in and there’s paper mache pulp in there too (lol, made with boiled toilet paper - it’s on my list of weird things I’ve done thanks to cosplay)

And I also have the hoopskirt made, underskirt, two layers of the ruffled white skirt hemmed, and the third layer is waiting to be hemmed, and my bloomers are in the making too (:

So everything is going well!

I’ll leave you all with a pic of the papermached balloon I used for the sword (and drew on).

He has sadly since shrivelled ):

Sup, bros. I’ve created a sewing blog so that my sewing doesn’t get lost in a sea of re-blogged cats.

I’ll be putting cosplay photos up, WIP photos, tutorials if I ever do something impressive (which to be honest I probably won’t).

Oh and my general sewing crap too. Seeing as I have a bunch of non-cosplay related projects going at the moment too, and I’m going to start a sewing course in July (hopefully) and then a costume making course beginning next year (hopefully).

So enjoy the (maybe not entirely) cat free blog!

… Oh yeah, my other blog is PuraRokai (I think, I really don’t even know).

And my DeviantART is http://purarokai.deviantart.com/.