Thursday before Ikasucon 2005, I stopped in at JoAnn's. They were having a sale on shirting. I had no idea what shirting was, but felt it and figured it would make a nice jacket..........so I bought some.

And so began the nightmare. XD

This was the first cosplay costume that required sewing that I did entirely on my own. I had help with my KH Yuffie shirt, but I was completely left to figure it out by myself with the Kamui jacket. Despite never having sewn a jacket, much less anything with sleeves before, I tackled the project headfirst and managed to turn a pile of black fabric and a pile of bias tape into a fully lined and completed jacket within 48 hours of time, spent at the house of a friend who had a sewing machine (but no air conditioning). I just about died. I easily spent a good twenty hours on the machine during those two days. But I managed to complete my first jacket, with lining.....even if the sleeve lining's seams are on the wrong side. XD Whoops.

Now, the Shinken I started the Monday before the convention. I started with a couple of dowel rods and rubber bands on early tuesday morning, covered it with tin foil to help bulk it out, holding it in place with masking tape and craft wire, and had the first layer of paper mache drying before I went to bed for the night. The next day I was off to my friend's house to sew the jacket, so when I got back on wednesday, I paper mached the other side of the sword and let it dry overnight. Thursday consisted of spackling and sanding the sword down as much as I could in the limited time I had left, and by early friday morning I had painted the sword, added accents with Sculpey, glued on the jewel in the center of the hilt, and wrapped the handle with twelve yards of the stuff you put on wreaths. :3 I finished about eight AM the morning of the con.

The jacket cost me around $20-25 to make in the end, because my sewing supplies were still limited and I had to buy thread and rebuy a different shade of bias tape, plus I bought the lining at full price. The sword cost about the same to make (mostly due to the two bags of $6 Claycrete I went through, as well as the two tubes of spackle and acrylic paint).

The Shinken was quite a success at the con, though sadly many people thought it would be all right to experimentally pick up my sword without asking by the top of the blade, and by the end of Saturday I had a huge crack running the midsection of the blade right above the edge of the hilt. My sword wasn't designed to be supported that way, and I wish people had been a bit more polite. ;___;

That aside, I had a lot of photos taken and generally had a good time in the costume. I also had a small briefcase that looked like Kamui's school briefcase from X1 that I carried around when I got tired of holding the sword (which wasn't too heavy, really--it weighs less than five pounds), and was also equipped with some feathers and several yards of red ribbon, the latter of which I dramatically draped around myself and the sword and walked around with for a good portion of Saturday. I entered my first Masquerade as a walkon in this costume, and the judge commented that I looked like I had walked straight out of the X artbook. Given that I walked into the room with a 5'7" sword covered in ribbon, I can understand why she said it. XD

Kamui's always been my favorite X character, so having the chance to cosplay him was really awesome. The jacket is comfortable to wear and the lining makes it warm enough to counter the effects of overzealous airconditioning. ^__^