Kimono & Cosplay

My sister-in-law and I spent the weekend working on an original character cosplay idea for a Sci-Fi event at the Bear Space Collective. Initially we were going to cosplay Hyatt and Excel from the anime Excel Saga:

 

But then we decided we didn't want to do anything revealing and/or skintight, so we sat around thinking for awhile. I saw this lame show on TV at work the other day, and it inspired my cosplay idea because although the show was lame, the woman in it had on this great triangular dress. It was one of those 60's space flicks, and it was just... cheesy and funny and dumb all at once. I told my sis-in-law (going to call her Liara from here on out - that makes it a lot easier! xD) about it and the idea took off; she designed two original characters for our cosplay:

We headed to Joann's in search of the right fabric and notions. Liara knew she had some fabric at home she wanted to use for her costume (some stiff silver stuff), but there were several remnants of clear vynil at Joann's so we picked those up as well as some shiny silver metallic zippers and some big buttons that we painted with metallic tempera paint. I happened to have about a yard and a half of high-quality black vinyl (the soft stuff for upholstery lying around), leftovers from our Mass Effect cosplay. She's also got these fantastic silver boots too lol - we call them 'moon boots'! For my costume I found the best polka dotted fabric - I love it!

We nabbed one of those Sew n' Save patterns for $2.99 for some girls' sack dresses, and with a few inches added on here and there, we were ready to go! I ran to walleyworld the next day and got a hula hoop and we sewed it in:

 

 

Was a chore getting the hula hoop in under the foot - actually I had to take the foot and its assembly off completely! And then afterwards... the machine decided that now that the hula hoop was in there it was suddenly going to cooperate LOL. While Liara was helping me sew up the collar, I started work on the oven mitts and the boot covers. I had some Hello Kitty houseshoe boot things and there was this great silver pleather... I kept thinking Geri Spice the whole time!

 

 

 

Semi-finished project!

 



 

Still not done, but well on my way! I've only got the helmet to go and the arms - if I can afford to do them :D (Also sorry I'm wearing a shirt under my dress - we worked late into the night as usual and I wasn't about to do a whole dress rehearsal!)

 

On a kimono-related note I got two things in the mail from Rakuten a couple days ago: a set of two kimono 'crips' and two new date-jime! I love Rakuten because there are so many deals there - the date-jime were less than $10 apiece! 2 for the price of 1!

 

 



 

 

Thanks for reading, see you soon!