reliving the past through fashion

Tag: uniform

I’m hopefully going to get everything finished and take some photos of each costume this week. Here’s the first installment: some photos of my Lucia cosplay, which might be my favorite thing ever.

I really just love this costume, now that it’s all come together.

The cape and jacket I covered in previous posts; the trousers I whipped up last week, and they were so much easier than I expected. I literally just traced around a pair of jeans I own that fit me really well, and used that as my pattern; I serged all the seams, put a couple of darts at the waist, and put a hook to close them in the front. They’re pretty utilitarian – nothing fancy (although I did mean to do pockets, but I forgot >_>) but they fit great and look great. So I’m quite pleased.

I still need to make the hat and gloves, and the armor, which I’m working on tonight with some craft foam. Also need to add a hook to the top of the jacket, because the neckline kind of flops open a little when I move around. The boots are a pair that I own already, and they look good enough that I’m not going to bother with boot covers or cuffs or anything like that. Although I’m a little miffed that I didn’t take into account the heels, and so the cape falls just a bit short of hitting the ground when I’m wearing it. But it’s so not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

I think I’ve got my makeup down for this cosplay, too; the wig still needs some work. I’ve used a number of cheap Ebay wigs over the years, but this one I think is the worst in quality I’ve ever had – it’s super thin and really unmanageable despite spending a week in a fabric softener bath to sleek it up. It came with a lot of built-in snarls, too, that I had to cut out they were so tangled. I’m hoping once I have the hat on it will disguise the fact that the wig sucks a little bit.

Well, I didn’t get nearly as much done this week as I thought I was going to. I had two extra days off for a total of eight days – which seems like a lot of time, but it vanished pretty quickly! Although, I lost two whole days to being sick and I had a lot of chores to do, which ate up most of another day.

I meant to get this whole uniform taken care of this week, but so far, I’ve only got one piece done – the jacket.

So, I studied Lucia’s uniform as best I could given there aren’t a lot of pictures of it and it doesn’t get a lot of screen time in the game. I came up with a list of items to make to complete the outfit: a jacket, pants, boots (or possibly boot cuffs if I have a pair that works,) gloves, and that belt/loincloth type thing she’s wearing. I began with the jacket.

For this project I bought some black stretch sateen, which is a nice looking fabric with a nice sheen, and, bonus, it stretches! I threw together a quick pattern by draping on my dress form, and got to work. There’s no visible opening on the jacket in the picture, but it looks to be double-breasted, so I designed it that way; it comes to about hip-length, and is slightly tapered to a point in the back.

This was my back piece pattern. I added a little extra room to have a pleat at the center back. No other reason than that I though it would look kinda cool.

My mum has a lovely little BabyLock serger, which I don’t often make use of – I put a lining in nearly everything that I make, which eliminates the need to finish the edges. But I didn’t have the time, energy, proper fabric, or desire to line this jacket (I have a feeling it’s going to be hot underneath this and that cape, and I didn’t want to add to that if I didn’t have to) so I opted out of lining it, and serged all the seams instead. So quick and easy!

I was lax with the picture-taking again, but the construction went mostly the same way it always does – I sewed the front and back pieces together, and then drafted a basic sleeve pattern, and attached sleeves. I made a facing for the neckline, and hemmed all the other edges. Then I tried it on to mark out where my button holes would be.

Sewing button holes. Mine are obviously far from perfect, but they serve their purpose. I don’t know if I’ll ever get good at doing button holes and eyelets; mine are always just… a little bit off-looking.

I couldn’t really tell what kind of buttons she’s got on her uniform – they look kind of like they might be gold/red toggles, but there’s no way to tell. So I just grabbed some nice silver military-looking buttons instead.

Here’s the finished jacket, complete with buttons! It turned out quite nice, for something which will mostly not be seen…

I also threw together this belt/skirt/whatever thing she wears around her waist. It’s made of the black stretch sateen and some scraps of the red sateen I used for the cape, and hooks in the back. I’m not sure yet how I’ll get that stripe design or whatever it is on the front of it – I thought of embroidering it, but I’m not sure it will look the way I want. More likely I’ll find some matching fabric or ribbon and just tack it on.

Also, I stumbled upon this really neat app lately for cosplayers – Cosplanner.

It helps you to keep track of your costumes and projects, and I’m finding I like it a lot – It’s clearly designed for cosplayers, but I have ideas of using it for all my costuming projects. And it’s free, so that’s a win! Anyhow, you can see the ones I’m currently working on – all of my and my sister’s Anime-Zap! costumes are there. You can also see how not close to finishing I am overall, considering that this convention is in January – yikes! Having lists and percentages really helps me keep track of things, though, so this app was a great find. Up until now I just had pages and pages of checklists on my phone that I was trying to keep track of, and it was kind of a mess.

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