Samurai! (or how I ended up cosplaying Hinamori Momo)

Back in March, I was contacted by the Worcester Art Museum about finding a cosplayer for the opening of the Samurai! exhibit, which combines real samurai goodies such as armor with current pop culture. Of course this seemed interesting since I used to intern at Higgins Armory (an excuse to look at armor again and make costumes? yes please!).

I spent a while trying to think of a costume that would be fairly recognizable, family friendly, and doable in a couple weeks. It suddenly hit me, Bleach! I used to both read the manga and watch the show so I'm relatively familiar with the early parts of the story (there's a crazy amount of chapters/episodes now). I asked my boyfriend to participate as well, and we agreed on dressing as Momo Hinamori and Renji Abarai. These characters are both lieutenant shinigami, who wear a black and white uniform based on traditional Japanese clothing.

I don't have finished photos yet, but here's a bit of a sneak peak and some construction notes:

"I am the darkness of space"

I mean, not really, these projects are pretty bright and colorful. It's just something I say sometimes...

Anyways, I finally got around to making those space suits!

I will underestimate the size of my legs forever...

...but at least I can finally make this top consistently!

A few months ago, I made a wearable mock-up of a full body suit/ catsuit. It worked out fairly well so I ordered fabric for the final version. With that, I got a yard of this awesome galaxy print poly/spandex to play with.

I wanted to make some tights using the new fabric and the bodysuit pattern, since the legs on it fit very well. (Can you tell where this is going yet?) The fabric is a lot stretchier than the previous one, so I foolishly took out a bit of length while cutting out the tights. Bad idea. The legs ended up much too short, and I had to chop the feet off to make them at all wearable. At least they still work as leggings!

Are these panties really high enough?

I tried making underwear once before, and it didn't seem worth the effort (time + money) but was pretty fun. This time I made high-waisted panties since those are more difficult to purchase (and by making them I can use whatever cute fabric patterns I want). I wanted to make them out of lace for that pin-up look, and tried to match the front panel fabrics to lace I already had around.

I was inspired by one of my friends who mentioned buying a cheap pair of plain high-waisted undies to use as a pattern for some pin-up styled ones. This seemed like a good idea, so I also bought a pair. I then remembered some posts on Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing about making high-waisted panties, so I looked those up for reference. I like the pattern Gertie uses more than my sample panties, but it wasn't available when I made these.

As-I-Sew, now with more pink fluff monsters!

A long, long time ago, when I was super into looking at lolita clothes, I bought several yards of pink organza to sew my own petticoat. I sewed some easier petticoats and bought others, thus the pink organza sat around in a box.

The last time I went to put on one of my shorter petticoats I noticed it wasn't giving me much poof at all. Upon closer inspection I found the tulle was a lot less stiff and crunchy than I remembered it. It's probably spent too much time crushed in the closet (how in the world am I supposed to store the half dozen or more petticoats I have? They need their own room).

This old petticoat would not do (side note: it was the first I ever made), so I pulled out that pile of pink organza. Organza petticoats are a lot harder to kill than tulle, though more work due to all the layers and fabric needed to get them fluffy. I hoped this wouldn't be too difficult since I have a ruffler foot, but man was I wrong on that one.

On ruffler feet and organza:
Organza shreds like it's its job.
Rufflers grip the edges of fabric, tearing into it with their little robot teeth.
Rufflers look like little smiling robots.

The experience quickly became a nightmare of getting organza caught in the ruffler and ripping out thread nests.

Alright then.
I didn't really know what I was doing, so the order in which I sewed everything could have been better. After sewing the two layers I made together I thought the petticoat still wasn't fluffy enough and added an extra ruffle close to the top of the bottom layer. This was kind of a hassle to add at that point because all the fluff gets in the way. Do not recommend.

The finished petticoat is two layers: A bottom layer that is three tiers and one extra ruffle sewn flat onto it, and a top layer that is two tiers (also fuller than the bottom one). All the ruffles are sewn together once with a straight stitch, zig-zagged on the edge, then sewn down flat in a "mock flat felled" finish. The vertical seams are french finished.

The petticoat  has a spandex drawstring waistband to avoid scratchy chiffon pressing into my waist, and to make size adjustment easier. The spandex on it's own was not strong enough to hold this up.

This is what the petticoat looks like worn normally on it's own and under one of my heavier skirts (the first cupcake skirt).

Because the bottom layer is smaller, it kind of squishes down some of the fluff when the petticoat is inside out and gives a slightly different shape.

Just for comparison, here's the skirt on it's own.

If you'd like to make your own petticoat, here's a sort of mini tutorial. This petti is 18" long and all the measurements include a half inch seam allowance. I have a 28" waist, for reference.

When I started, I wanted to do three tiers of gathering per layer of petticoat. My tiers weren't wide enough, so I'm giving you measurements for ones that would be. I switched to two tiers on the second layer because the three seemed unnecessary. This goes together like any "tiered skirt," which there is lots of tutorials for out there. The info here is mostly for figuring out the measurements.

Three tiered petticoat

• top tier 9" by 2*fabric width
• middle tier 7" by 3*fabric width
• bottom tier 5" by 4*fabric width

Two tiered petticoat

• top tier  8" by 2*fabric width
• bottom tier 12" by 4* fabric width

I suggest doing either two or three layers of organza.

Well, here's my underwear.

The other day I spent a couple hours making undies. I wasn't sure why I was doing it because it's not cost effective (fabric + elastic trim + about an hour of time per pair), and I wasn't even really using any amazingly unique fabrics. This would be more worth it had I used some super cool fabric, but that would have required going out and getting more things, which would have made it even less worth it...

For the most part, I wanted to do this because I kept seeing cute elastic trim at my local fabric store. A couple months ago I bought a few yards in like four different colors, and so here we are.

I used a combination of two tutorials. Mostly this one, for the pattern and construction order, but also this one for the method of trim attachment.

So, as the first tutorial states, I used an old pair of panties to make a pattern. (I'd show you what the originals looked like, but they are super worn out and I'm not going to do that.) The longer, thinner piece is the front with an attached crotch and the other is the back. I'm not sure what the benefit is of cutting the crotch and front as two separate pieces the way a lot of commercially produced panties do it, so I didn't cut them separately.

Here's what the pieces look like cut out:

For the crotch lining, I just used the bottom of the front pattern piece.

These pink ones were the first pair I made and had to re-do like three times because I kept mixing up the right/wrong sides of the fabric. The tutorial is very clear about how to arrange them, but somehow my brain just wasn't doing it.

As you can see, I cut each of them a little differently, mostly changing the width of the sides.  On the tie-dyed pair, I accidentally flipped the pattern for the back so the wrong side was on the fold (turning the crotch into the side seam). This made the crotch narrower, but apparently the pieces are symmetrical enough for it to still fit. Yay. I was afraid I had ruined everything and wouldn't even be able to recut it because there wasn't enough tie-dyed fabric (a shirt actually) to cut the piece again.

So, even though it doesn't feel like making these was worth it, they were kind of fun to put together. It's a pretty instant gratification project, which is nice to have once in a while.