The making of a Maijima Academy uniform – “The world god only knows” – part 1

I hope you are all prepared for a super long progress post relating to my most recent attempt at sewing, because that is exactly what i’m going to share right now! 

I started watching ‘The world God Only Knows’ several months ago, but it was only recently that I picked it up again. After breezing through the first season, several novels, and the first few episodes of season two I was dazzled by how incredible the series was. It doesn’t have an amazingly original plot line, or really great characters…but something about it came together and made me really enjoy it.

It didn’t take me too long to become dead set on attempting to make one of the girls Majima Academy uniforms, which are infamous for the bright red jackets and sharp pleated skirts.

Here are a few reference examples:

Step one was a mock up, I knew the entire design would be complicated since I have never attempted something so structured. Surprisingly, the mock up was really easy and came out quite well. The shape and sleeves were almost spot on. The fit was pretty decent, too.

Next up was making a mock up of the skirt, which ended up being a HUGE mess. But luckily it was pretty easy to tell where I had gone wrong. I took some of the pins out right after sewing the area they tacked down, that was a huge mistake. It ended up pulling out the pleats next to it and looking ugly.

I also made the pleats too big 2 1/2″ seemed about right to me, but it ended up looking odd.

For the ACTUAL skirt I chose 1 3/4″ wide pleats which looked much better!

By now I felt prepared enough (or as prepared as I’d ever feel) to use my actual fabric- which was purchased on a very recent trip into NYC. The red was actually really difficult to find, it seems the only fabric in that color is very heavy -really expensive- wool. The only material that was even half decent is the one pictured- and i’m still not fully happy with it.

Both materials are stretchy, the jackets/sweaters/whateveryoucallthem don’t look like they are made of uniform cloth, at least not to me. They look soft and comfortable, yet very fitted. So I chose a 2 way stretch knit. So soft, mm! I’m not sure what the skirt is made of, its a bit of a mystery fabric. It has a subtle sheen and nice stretch.

The materials in question.

For the skirt, I started out by cutting my material into a long strips which I later sewed together. Each pleat takes up 3x the amount of material as the desired width, so a 3″ pleat takes a 9″ of material. Since I have a 28″ waist I knew I needed somewhere around 90″ of fabric, but I cut 100″ for safety.

I cut the strips 15″ wide and ironed a 1/2 hem that I secured with hem tape. Then I measured my pleats out /very carefully/ attempting to get them all equal. Each pleat should be 1 3/4″ wide. I tried very hard to get them all equal, though i’m pretty sure I failed.

The strip all pleated~

How it looked when pinned on.

The next step was sewing across all the pleats, then adding a waist band.

And, finally, adding a zipper, which proved quite challenging! I’m lucky that the jacket will cover the zipper completely, otherwise I would be tempted to redo it. (it’s pretty ugly…) I still need to add a snap on the waist band, but it’s pretty much done.

How the skirt looks on.

Then it came time to piece together my jacket.

Front pieces.

Sleeve.

And after basic assembly – please excuse how the skirt looks here, it was quite literally, thrown onto the dress form. As you can see, the jacket came out to big (got a little over enthusiastic whith my seem allowances                        there…). Though this was later fixed with a dart up the back.

How it looks on – pinned to keep it fitted.

Then, today I ironed all my seems, added interfacing to the inner portion, took around 4″ of material to make it fit properly, and finished a few seems. Still a very long way to go, but it’s getting there!

 

30 days of photography : Day 3 : Something you love

Today I was tasked with taking a picture of something I loved. So obviously, I chose my darling dog Guinevere.

I decided it would be best to photograph her in her “natural” position. (also known as sleeping.) Which proved the challenge of waking her up to the point where she would look at the camera. Needless to say, she wasn’t too happy. But she was willing to give me a sarcastic glare before going back to bed.

I’ll be the first to admit that none of these pictures are that great, but hopefully i’ll get make up points for cuteness!

Another photoshoot finished, all tucked in and ready for bed.

 

30 days of photography : Day 2 : Breakfast

Pretty shitty/lame photo for this one. I spent 2 hours attempting to get photos of stream coming out of a coffee mug, but I failed horribly, so you get this instead!

This is quite accurate to what I eat in the morning, I’m never hungry within 2 hours of awaking, but I have to take pills on a “full” stomach so I do need to eat a little something. And this is generally it, some sort of coffee drink for a kick start, with ginger snaps/toast/rice crisps/whatever sounds delicious on the side.

 

30 days of photography : Day 1 : A picture of yourself

So over the next month or two i’ll be doing this 30 day photography assignment. I’ve been given a list of things to photograph over these months and plan to post three a week. I’m not exactly looking forward to this but I don’t really have a choice, so I shall try to make the best of it!

Day 1: You. A picture of yourself or something that greatly represents you.

Being oh so creative I decided to take a photo of myself…

One of my first attempts! My big issue was things not focusing right. As you can see here the background is better focused then I am, which makes it pretty crappy from a photographers viewpoint.

And I have a new found respect for people who take many self portraits. They would appear to be quite easy, but they really, really aren’t. Especially when your outside and the lighting is nearly impossible to get right. I think this really shows in these shots- it’s hard to get the desired result without the camera physically in your hands. 

Though I do think this would have been easier with a clicker that instantly starts the timer, I do not have one of those so I manually set it to a 5 second delay, then run off and try to pose nicely in that small amount of time. It’s more stressful then one might think! 

In the hour I was outside I took 100someodd pictures of myself, the majority were to blurry, had lighting troubles, or were overall unflattering. Poses are really not my specialty, which became clear when trying this out. Luckily this one came out okay…or at the very least, okay enough to post here. 

 

Amulet Heart ~ Shugo Chara ~ Fan art

 

CC – Code Geass – Christmas Fan Art

Another DeviantART bonus post, this time around CC / C2 from the glorious anime that is “Code Geass”

 

“A very Christmasy Canada” Axis Powers Hetalia fan art and tutorial

A drawing of Canada from the anime Hetalia. This is a bonus post for DeviantArt, so it’s mostly WIP photos.

All done!

 

The making of Anya Alstreims Pink Dress – Christmas Cosplay

It has been far to long since I last did a progress report. I would have done one sooner..but I’ve been pretty lazy as of recently, so nothing exciting has been going on. The convention season is very much over, my next con is in late April, so it’s almost depressing working hard on something that has no purpose until that much later. 

But last Saturday my mom and I were in Joann’s for the Black Friday sale that extended into the weekend, I had planned to get white material for sleeves, and a few buttons. That was it. But then I saw the gorgeous Christmas materials that were on sale, (all of them 60% off) I couldn’t resist,  how could ANYONE resist that? I left the store with my white material…3 yards of red velvety material, 1/2 a yard of green material, and cardigan pattern. 

I had a project in mind for all of this, a version of Anya Alstreim I have fawned over for ages. I really like this design, it’s obviously lolita inspired, and very cute. Something about it always struck me as Christmasy. Upon seeing the Christmas fabric collection I was inspired to give this costume a try. I figure I can get some cute X-mas themed photos, maybe play around with my camera and tri pod to get some neat shots. 

But before anything else happens, I must make this beauty…or try to!

 

 

I had a half dozen yards of pink material laying around from another planned project that didn’t happen. This proved pretty convenient, so I got right to pattern drafting/cutting. I actually used the pattern I made for my Lichtenstein dress as a base. Of course I altered a lot of aspects, but it ended up being quite similar. Looking back I could have saved myself an awful lot of trouble if I just bought a pattern.

I’m really proud of how this worked out, despite the issues I learned SO MUCH, and tried SO MANY new things it was a really wonderful crash course in sewing a “different” type of thing. Some of the things I did for the first time on this include sewing in a zipper and making “seamless” pockets. 

Sadly, I didn’t take any WIP’s throughout this process, I was to ‘in the moment’ to even think of picking up my camera. Next I got to work on the bolero, I had a cardigan pattern to help me out, but the mock up was hideous, I have no clue who designs these patterns they are all so unfitted and ugly. I ended up altering it heavily, pinning away and marking lines. If you couldn’t tell, the left side of the garment is the original, the right is the edited version. 

A few minutes after completing this part, my sewing machine decided to break. I’m not sure what happened, but it ended up being beyond repairable with my own skills. We sent it to a shop where they said it would take 3 weeks to fix. I was beyond upset..this is a project I was enjoying and having fun with, working to get it done before Christmas, and then to hear I wouldn’t even have my machine back before Christmas. How horribly discouraging! 

Luckily, my mom is being nice enough to let me use her backup machine while mines in the shop. So tonight I resumed progress! I cut apart the bolero mock up and created a more stream lined pattern from it. Here is how it looked on the final fabric without sleeves, all pinned together.

If actually looked far better then I had expected, I thought the fit would be quite poor, boleros aren’t meant to be fitted, but I wanted mine to be a bit snuggly and have some real shape to it.

Once I got the shape right I went ahead and pinned the line to cut on, Anya has a ruffle/trim piece going through the middle of each side, to achieve this effect I cut each side in half, attached the ruffle and made a new seam embedding the ruffle into the seam. 

Heres the halfway picture:

 

Around this time I pulled the pink dress out and really realized how unhappy I was with it. The pockets and ruffles were really wrong. I ended up ripping a lot out, so now it looks pretty bad. I WILL fix it up, but for right now the bolero is my priority. 

Skipping ahead a few steps, the bolero sewn together. Everything needs to be ironed, and I really must tack those ruffles down. For right now the side seams and sleeves are just pinned on, I need to take them in a fair bit before actually sewing them. 

The final project I managed to get working on before “bed time” was the bow, I played around with the size A LOT but this is the one I like best, it’s oversized but not ridiculously so. I think it’s pretty cute, but I might be a bit biased since I love bows. Seriously, everything needs more bows. They are just awesome. It still needs to fixing up, and tails, but it’s okay for right now.

So that’s that! Still tons left to fix up, but i’m looking forward to working on it more. It’s been a really fun project, so far. 

 

As my first year of cosplay comes to an end…

A lot has changed this year, I got active on DeviantArt and Youtube, and managed to collect a (small) but absolutely lovely following. I started working harder on drawings, and in exchange I’ve had some people I really respect recognize and show interest in my work. But the big difference was the new presence of cosplay in my life. This post is about looking back on the year, what happened and what i’ve experienced. If you’ve been reading my blog for this past year you will probably have heard/seen all of this before, but for those new folks: Here is my year of cosplay experience.

When I first became interested in cosplay, I had no idea what I was getting into. All I knew was that dressing strangely appealed to me, it was something I wanted to do. But I NEVER thought I would get the opportunity to meet/work with such nice people. I’ve had a lot of fabulous experiences this year, and I have cosplay to thank for most of them.

The first shock that came with cosplaying for the first time was the photography aspect. I had over 300 pictures taken of me in one weekend by complete strangers, I was impossibly awkward and clumsy but it was incredible on so many levels.  A few days later photos began to surface online, and I suddenly saw the first pictures of myself that I had EVER liked. (Those are pictured below)

Photography credits: Photo on left by Ollie, top right by Acksonl, bottom right by Andrew

Before my second convention came about a photog contacted me, he had taken a few really nice pictures of me at NYAF and was interested in working with, so we set a shoot up. Before that I hadn’t realized people actually set up photoshoots at conventions -and for free, too!

Photography by Conpics

I must admit, when I was younger I wanted to be a model, my mom and I started watching ‘Americas Next Top Model’ when I was around seven. It seemed like the coolest thing imaginable, you got to dress up, have people fawn over you, and get pretty pictures taken! Later on I realized it’s not nearly as glamorous as 7-year-old-me thought. I would never be willing to lose the weight for traditional modeling, or take all the confidence blows. But the idea of it still appeals to me, I really like makeup, fashion, attention, and photography. So this realization that I might be able to have that sort of experience was pretty neat.

For AnimeNEXT I emailed a photog to see if he would be willing to work with me, he wasn’t very interested in my costumes, but he had a free shoot cancelation, so we booked a time. When the convention rolled around I was all sorts of nervous. I dislike being bad at things, and I knew I wouldn’t be good at this. This guys photos were gorgeous and I was scared to mess up, and In addition to that I was quite seriously worried the guy would see me and decide I wasn’t worth working with.

Photography by Stephen Tang

But all went well,  he was nice and helpful with giving me pose and expression ideas. The photos came our beautiful, which is entirely because of his talent. After I got these pictures back I decided that I wanted to do more shoots, it was such a delightful experience and the results were so pretty..

Otakon was my next convention, and my second favorite convention of the year. It was an autograph heavy convention where I got to meet Michael Tatum, Johnny Yong Bosch, Stephanie Sheh, and a bunch of others. All of them were amazingly nice and enthusiastic about my art work. But the most amazing part was having Patrick Seitz recognize my art work from DA. I never expected anything like that, so it was kinda incredible.

I had a photoshoot, too. This was my first time wearing a costume I REALLY like so it was a blast.

Top photo and middle left by Andrew, other three by PandaPunch

New York Anime Fest came around again, marking my one year point of being in the hobby. It was an incredible convention, I got to meet Hiro Mashima –one of my idols, meeting him was huge. He was amazingly nice and gave me confidence about my art work. Later on I saw him and he waved to me, gah, it was awesome. It was also my first time wearing a costume I had made myself –I was super nervous about wearing one of my creations, but it went really well, and was well received!

I had two photoshoots with it, both were really easy and fun. These are some of my favorite pictures ever taken of me, I think they are incredible.

Photography by conpics

Photo by Diamond Crevasse

And that was this year so far as cosplay terms, I didn’t win any awards or do anything amazing but I met some people I adore and got to work with others who are really talented. Every convention i’ve gone to has been a phenomenal experience, and i’m very happy I chose to get into it.

I am so grateful to everyone I met, and for all of those who took pictures of me for no reason at all. And you know, all those wonderful photographers that were so nice to me despite me being clueless.

I’m really looking forward to next year, though I find it hard to believe that it could be any better then  this year, I hope it is. I can’t wait to see what new experiences it brings!

Costumes pictured (top to bottom): Rena Ryuugu [higurashi], Sia [shuffle!], Kaede Fuyou [shuffle!], Anya Alstreim [Code Geass R2], Sheryl Nome [Macross Frontier] 

Conventions pictured: NYAF 2010, AnimeNEXT 2011, Otakon 2011, NYAF 2011 

 

 

Kiddy Grade – “In search of pants we shall continue watching” – Lumière drawing

 I started the anime “Kiddy Grade” last night, I’m like 8 years late to discovering this anime, but enjoying it nonetheless. It’s been a while since I watched more then a few episodes of anime, so it’s nice to have a new one to watch and enjoy. 

“Kiddy Grade” Is a science fiction drama, it has an interesting plot and creative characters. One of the main characters in particular, Lumière instantly caught my attention. Her character design is amazing cute, from her hair to her little ruffly outfits, and her personality is somewhat emotionless but adorable. She reminds me a lot of Anya, just her attitude. 

The one thing that slightly diturs me from her is the fact that she never wears pants, or skirts, more then this school swimsuit like thing. My dad and I have been watching though the series looking, quite literally, for pants of any sort. XD 

After burning through 7 episodes last night, i’ve decided it doesn’t matter. I love her character enough to cosplay it anyway. Wait, what? Yeah. I’m going to cosplay Lumière, since she is fabulous. I tend to decide almost instantly on what I want to cosplay. This has happened before with Kaede, Sheryl, Stocking, and Anya. One episode into the series, and i’m already set on being them. 

 I’ve already purchased the wigs for her and i’m super excited, like really, really excited. ^^

But onward with the drawing~