Construction Details:

Oh boy, prepare for TL;DR.

Skirt/Shirt: The black skirt is from a thrift store, with the ruffle sewn onto the underskirt. I love the fabric I found for the ruffle, so I incorporated it into other parts of the costume as well. The shirt is made from red jersey with some sort of white polyester for the sleeves. I had a devil of a time trying to get the collar right, but the rest of it was a fairly straightforward series of trial and error.

Accessories: The belt, necklace, headpiece, and wrist ropes are upholstery trim. A single rope wasn't thick enough, so I twisted three lengths together and hot glued them together to get the thickness for the belt, necklace and headpiece. The wrist ropes were just fine with one length. The mirror is painted craft foam, 1mm PVC, plastic gems, toothpicks, a cheapo mirror from Jo-Ann, and a boatload of hot glue. The fan and pouch were my mother's from when she was a kid in Japan, and they went perfectly so I stuck 'em in. The zori are from Daiso.

Shimenawa (the big rope thing): The paper strips are shide, folded using a tutorial I found online. My bro Matt helped me make the framework using HCC Cosplay's great wing harness tutorial. It's basically a padded aluminum backplate with a flagpole bracket bolted to it, held on by a corset underneath my costume. The bracket sticks out a hole in my shirt and the hoop plugs into it via a PVC pipe and pin. The hoop is made from a hula hoop, with stuffed fabric tubes wrapped around and glued into place. Many dozens of gluesticks died valiantly during the making of this prop, but their sacrifice was not in vain. It's pretty sturdy, although it does tend to want to tip over my head when I bend forward.

Personal Thoughts:

I've been wanting to cosplay Kanako for a long time, and I decided about a week and a half before ALA that I was going to make it. Naturally, of course, I promptly got sick. I wound up with three days to pound it all out, which is why when I first wore it I was missing the shimenawa, the belt, and a few other details. I was able to finish the rest of it afterward in time for a shoot with my friends, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Hanyaan did my makeup, styling, and post-production, and Joe Shadows did the photography.

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