For Anime North 2004 a friend of mine showed me the art for Soryuden, trying to get people involved in her masq group. I fell in love with Matsuri's designs and signed on, dragging Infini with me to be Lady Buffalo. Needless to say, the group fell apart, but AFTER I had already gone out and purchased 18 meters of various organza. With plans put aside, the mounds of fabric sat in my closet until about November 2004.
I'd tried to motivate myself on 2 separate occasions to start/finish this costume and failed miserably both times. Eventually I made this my final term project for one of my classes at school and STILL couldn't get it finished. :: sigh :: I fail at life ... I fail at toast ...
Construction Notes:
Almost the entire costume is made from drapery organza. The artwork shows Matsuri's dress fading from a light pink to a vivid fuchsia, which appears to be the underskirt, but it also very soft and flowing. So my stupid idea was to make the whole thing out of organza, with a layer of fuchsia as the base, and then a layer or two of white overtop to mute the fuchsia, but still have it appear while walking/moving.
This proved to be problematic, as it ended up talking AT LEAST 4 or 5 layers of white organza to make the fuchsia ... well ... LESS fuchsia! The original 10 meters I bought ended up doubling, probably even tripling by the end of this project.
The skirt itself is a giant circle with a 1' long train in the back (my fuchsia fabric was unfortunately 1/2 the width of my white, so I couldn't cut pieces as big as I would have liked). I can't even recall off the top of my head the exact amount of layers in that frick'en skirt, but it's at least 8 ... at least! And there is NO understructure to the skirt, it stands up on its own because of sheer volume! -_-'
The bodice was the first pattern I'd ever drafted from instructions to fit me exactly. The base is just a white cotton, but overtop of it is a layer of white organza that I went out of my mind working with to try and make the bodice match the sheen of skirt and sleeves. My theory was that if the bodice was plain cotton it would look out of place against the rest of the costume. Took far too long to do, and was irritating as hell.
I remade the sleeves for Katsucon 12 after finding fabric that was close enough to my original material. Even then I couldn’t make as many layers as I would have liked to, as I underestimated how much I would need … again … So if you’re wondering why the sleeves seem a little darker than the rest of the costume, that’s why. They’re also the first thing people tend to step on, which is not fun.
I finished most of this costume for Ad Astra 25 in April of 2006 (after 2 years of working on it on and off!) The corset was done for Katsucon 12, though the gold decorations on the front were left until Ad Astra, as I was deathly afraid of either painting it or using appliqué (which ended up being the method I used), since if I screwed up it was the one thing I wouldn’t be able to fix. Honestly, the only thing left to do on this costume is restyle the wig (its in bad shape), fix the skirt placements and add the details to the front ribbon … but at this point I’ve competed with it, I’ve won, and I don’t really have the motivation to do any more with it.
And kids, the moral of today's story:
ORGANZA IS EVIL!!!!! If you're considering working with it RUN AWAY!!!!!!
The End ...
Canada