Construction Details:

Let's start from the bottom and work our way up, shall we?

Those boots. Those damn boots. They took me FOREVER and had my hands all scratched up. I purchased a pair of gold laced boots thinking that I could put the red velvet from my dress to back the lace and give a cool embroidered effect. Great idea, save for the fact that it looked stupid with the netting. So I cut the lace out, stitched over all the embroidered details by hand, and sewed the pieces back into the boots. Hours and hours of hard work, but I am very proud of what I did. I lined the inside of the boots with felt to save my hand painted tights from getting ripped to shreds!

The dress is red velvet with gold silk bias. I embroidered the velvet carefully with metallic gold/silver thread and lined the dress with cotton. The sashes are all trimmed with decorative finishes and trims. My sleeves got the same treatment, but instead of embroidery I used sequins to do the swirly details.

The pauldrons are my first leather project, wet formed from light/medium weight leather and painted with gold leather paint. They're not what I intended originally but I think the round semi-sphere look worked in my favor. I decided that instead of one cape, I wanted to have two shoulder capes to attach to the pauldrons. I found a beautiful organza with sheer shimmery sequins all over it, the fabric came purple and I did an ombre/gradient dye to make it fade from dark pink to the light purple it came in. The tassles on the back are made from home decoration rope and embroidery thread, also dyed.

To finish the look, I accessorised with a hair ribbon and several rings. The ribbon is made from some of the sash fabric, I weaved a thin wire through the hem to give it some body. The rings are resin gems backed with fun fabrics, glitter, and origami paper to go with the overall theme of the costume.

Personal Thoughts:

Final Fantasy VI is a very important game to me, Terra is a very important character to me. I've been wanting to cosplay as her since I started cosplaying with her. As my namesake, I kept saying "I'll do it next year when I'm more skilled." I said this for five years or more... then I had a group and it suddenly happened for real. I will confess right here that when I put on the entire costume for the first time, I almost cried. (Of course, I restrained myself to save my makeup work.)

So this is it. Cosplay dreams come true!

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