Construction Details:

This costume took me somewhere over 80 hours to make (I stopped keeping track around hour 60). The dress is made of casa crepe satin (my favorite type of fabric). I used a pattern for the bodice, which is also lined, and freehanded the skirt, which is pleated* on the outside. The collar is gathered casa sheer. The darker pink decoration on the inside of the skirt "plumage" is more casa crepe (scraps from Ariel) ironed on with stitch-withchery. The modesty piece/loincloth-thing is wrong-side-out stretch satin, lined, and the red underskirt is serged chiffon. The sash is a pretty pre-wrinkled fabric I found and wraps one-and-a-half times around and hooked together in the back. The ribbon is (again) casa crepe, pre-tied and secured in the back with snaps. The white things, dubbed "overalls" by Rynn when she did this costume for WCS, are two layers of fabric with heavyweight interfacing. The edges are covered with satin ribbon "home-made-bias-tape." The sleeves are a luxurious voile (curtain fabric) I found in the remnants bin at JoAnn's for 50cents/yard(!!!). They are tapered so that nearest to my body they are 54in to the ground and at my fingertips 24in to the ground (that is, 3yds of fabric each). I cut them into feathers, gathered them, and attached them to regular sleeves made of the same material. The earrings and prominent necklace beads are fimo which I painted using acrylic paint (purple), a paint pen (gold), and a sharpie (dark blue), then covered in spray glaze. I felt very strongly about making sure the anklet had depth and dimension, so I used wonderflex which I molded to have ridges to mimic the lines in the picture. It was then coated in wood glue and painted with acrylic paint. I used E-6000 to attach a red gem and drilled holes in the back to lace it up with silver cording. Oh, and the symbol on my forehead is washable magic marker* that we found at the cosplay repair station 5 minutes before judging when I realized I'd forgotten about it XD
*For AnimeNEXT I remade the skirt to fit better, but this time omitted the pleats. Horrifically, I forgot the purple sash, but Elly~Star bailed me out with a sash from her Celes costume. Also, this time we remembered to draw our symbols; mine was made with BenNye lipliner pencil.

Personal Thoughts:

This is quite honestly my favorite costume to date and my proudest work yet. I worked so hard on it and am so thrilled with how it came out. When I finally put on Friday of AB and it all came together I couldn't stop looking in the mirror because I was in awe of it all. Thanks to Elly~Star for being my Yui and to Neige and Shyala for helping me get into costume when those darn sleeves kept getting in my way!
I was also so thrilled to re-wear this for AnimeNEXT 2012. We ran into a snag when the glue holding together our headdresses MELTED in the hot car, but we were able to repair them. Thank you so much to Laurel and Anna for taking on our impromptu photoshoots to have even more gorgeous photos of these costumes!

Styling Notes

Technically speaking the wig itself took no styling. Everything on it, including the hair loops, are a separate headpiece attached to a headband. I made the loops out of coat hangers, felt, hair extensions, and lots of freeze spray and hot glue. I attached them to the headband with more hot glue and covered the ugly gluey bits with gold cording. The beads were strung together on clear beading line and hot glued on. The blue thing had beads sewn on and was also glued to the headband. The wings are white feathers I dyed yellow and then, like the rest, hot glued together and to the headband along with a little bias tape for additional masking. The headband itself is the same color as the wig and pinned in with giant hairpins, then masked by bits of hair pulled around the wings. I considered trimming the wig because Miaka's hair looks a little shorter in the reference picture, but you can't really tell since it's being blown about by wind and ultimately I was too afraid of screwing it up.

Wig Review

Never leave anything secured with hot glue in the sun in a car on a hot day. 'Nuff said.

Sorry, you must be a registered user of and logged in to view and add comments. Either log in or register now!