Construction Details:

Skills used:
mold-making and casting, embroidering, sewing, lining, pattern-drafting, prop-making, glove-making, and wig-styling.

The garment:
After drafting my patterns guided by the book "Patternmaking for Fashion Design," I created mock-ups of this costume to ensure a perfect fit. I drew on the strangely shaped fabric details while wearing the mock-up and cut up the mock-up to use as a stencil for my final fabrics. Then I lined the garment and hand-sewed shoulder pads as this 80's design called for. These are the first pair of pants I made, and I am especially proud of the connections between the navy and gray suiting fabrics. It was a lot of heartache to rip apart serged seams TWICE to get the welt seams just right, but I am happy with the results.

Mold-making and casting:
To ensure that all of the ankle guards and chest accessories were consistent, I took small blocks of MDF to a belt-sander to create a "masters" for molds-making. The masters were primed with car paint primer then sanded til they gleamed and hot glued into a small constructed cardboard box. The silicon rubber compound (Mold Max 30) was poured then stuck in a pressure pot, followed by a vaccuum chamber to get bubbles out. white and black plastic resins were used to make the actual finals. The white was mixed with resin dyes to avoid the need for a paint job once cured.

The wig: I bought a base wig on Amazon.com and teased the hair near the part to shroud the netting. The bump was sprayed in place using Got2B hairspray glue, and bangs were cut and curled.

Gloves: I ripped apart old gloves and used the carcass as a stencil. Initially I tried machining them but it was a disaster and I ended up hand-sewing them.

The gun: The gun is a combination of styrene, sanded MDF, and epoxy, primed with car-paint and painted. I drew up a reference image in AutoCAD and printed it off to use as a stencil to make sure everything fit jut as it should. Currently it is heavier than I'd like it to be, but if I find the time before FSC, I'll make a cast out of it.

Personal Thoughts:

Kiyone Makibi has always been my favorite Tenchi girl, followed by Ryoko in a close second. She is the only sane lady of the bunch and her Mihoshi-imposed misery was fun to watch. I've wanted to cosplay Kiyone's galaxy police uniform for a long time but I did not have the technical sewing knowledge until last year to pull it off properly. I made my prop gun and suffered many hours sanding and splacking it, but I am very happy with the results. Best of all my boyfriend Cobheran cosplayed as Tenchi and my TenchixKiyone romance was made real lol.


This intense project was made far easier by the Christmas gifts received last year: a serger and an embroidery machine. I am especially grateful for the fabrics gifted to me by a kind friend and his mother, Terry Chu, who closed their bridal factory due to the recession; it is thanks to their generosity that this costume exists.

Styling Notes

I expected such a simple style to require less than 10 minutes, but I had to do a heck of a lot of teasing at the part to achieve the 80s look. I used hot rollers in the bangs to get a nice curl.

Wig Review

I love this wig, I did not expect to love the green/black color mix as much as I did.

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