The mysterious druid of Valedale - Avalon WIP and preview

Finally I'm making something!
Here it comes - a WIP post about a certain druid from the game StarStable Online. It's Avalon - a guy without a surname.

Avalon reference picture (found on Google).

This guy is the one who has basically all the information about Jorvik and its history (well, he might not know as much as Spy Master but still). He's one of the characters who help your character and the other Soulriders in the war against Garnok and its minions.

I must admit that the first time when I saw Avalon... He scared the shit out of me! You see, I had just been watching an episode of Doctor Who. In said episode they were fighting against the Weeping Angels I'm so going to cosplay that Statue of Liberty Weeping Angel in the future and this guy's clothing looks just a bit like theirs...
And when I was just running all around Valedale with my horse I literally ran into Avalon.
I might have let out a very, eh, manly scream. Oops.

But let's get into the business~!

Avalon was quite easy to make but damn, my back still hurts from painting in a hunched position. Yes - I decided to paint those white patterns since it was the easiest option. And cheapest.
But yeah, for the robe I used these patterns:

• Upper part of the robe: patterns of a sleeveless top
• The lower part of the robe: patterns of an A line skirt (originally used for Cornelia Hale)
• The sleeves: the pattern I used for North Italy's uniform 

Really, I'm not even sure if this is a cosplay or a puzzle...

This is where I started.

That's not the actual length of the robe; it's a lot longer. In the end I begun to wonder was there even any point to use that skirt pattern but oh well.

Painting the sleeves.

This took a lot more time than I thought it would take. I painted the belt and the hem of the robe too. The sleeves and the hem are painted with white fabric paint and the belt is painted with a mixture of yellow and white paints.

The paint isn't waterproof until one irons it. I bought the paint from Rauman Askarteluohjaus.

I'm pretty happy how this turned out to be! 

On the left: the finished product (sleeve). It took an hour to paint...

I painted these on some old newspapers and at some point I understood that the paint had gone through the fabric - and that's why the newspapers got attached to the fabric. There are still bits and pieces of paper in my costume.

Oops.

But yeah, I didn't let that disturb me too much and just went on with my project.

The details before I attached them to the robe.

Fun fact: these are the symbols of the Soulriders. The star symbolizes Lisa, the crescent moon symbolizes Linda, the sun symbolizes Anne ("The Sun of Pandoria") and the lightning bolt symbolizes Alex.
When I attached these to the robes I raged and cried A LOT. You see, the thread I used had shitty quality and my sewing machine didn't want to co-operate with it. On top of that my sewing machine is at as old as I am (and that means 20 years) so yeah, I guess that the old guy just didn't want to be my friend either - in some parts of the costume the zigzag looks very hideous.

The backside of the robe.

The front side of the robe. Excuse me my foot photobombing...

After this all I had to do was to sew those two pieces + sleeves together and the robe was ready~!

At this point I have to admit that I left out some details from the sleeves and the cape. You see, all of those are symbols from the game and every symbol is quite important. I really couldn't figure out which symbols I should've made (I mean, look at that reference picture - some parts look very incoherent!) so I decided to leave them out. Didn't want to put wrong symbols there because wrong symbol = wrong meaning.

Then... The hooded cape.
I didn't have patterns for this but luckily my lovely godmother had and she gave the patterns to me <3
This one was quite easy to make, only took me a couple of hours to make and it would've taken even less time had my sewing machine not bitched about everything.

I don't have any other WIP pics of this, sorry. :<

And after that...
My costume was finally ready!!

I didn't have time to do the make-up test yet, sorry about that.

The preview pics © my little brother (who actually asked if I was going to cosplay Gandalf the Grey, sorry bro, at least not yet xD).

I will wear this costume to Yukicon - only on Saturday though, I don't even know yet if I'll attend the con on Sunday or not.
But there it is, my first cosplay in 2017!
See you guys in Yukicon~!

-Firith

Vee~! North Italy WIP & preview

A few months ago I decided to cosplay North Italy from Hetalia: Axis Powers at Tracon 2016. At some point I almost cancelled this plan since, well, I really thought that I couldn't make this costume - I've never made military outfits before and I thought that they would be too difficult for me to make, especially when I haven't made almost anything myself this year. In the end I decided that "fuck it, I can do it", called my godmother and she was kind enough to help me with the patterns etc.

So, let's begin~!

The collar shirt I used in my second Walter photoshoot is actually meant for Italy. I bought it from Tallinn in May since it cost something like ten euros and I wouldn't have had time to sew it myself anyway. Well, in that point I might have had time, but.. I know myself too well.

The first self-made thing for this costume were the pants. I used the same patterns which I used also for my James and Levi pants, just modified them a bit. Nothing too difficult, only took me a few hours to make (I think it was something like four hours). Note that the fabric I bought isn't legit for the uniforms but North Italy's uniform in Hetalia isn't legit either so I decided not to be too strict about it.

The next part on my "must to do"-list was the jacket of the uniform. I know, it's missing some details but I ran out of time (probably my own fault this time AGAIN) and since the uniform isn't legit I was like "nah, fuck it, it's good enough". I'll probably make those details later.
Since I hadn't done anything like this before I quite quickly contacted my godmother again and asked for her advice. And today, a couple of days before the con, she had time to help me. It took us 8 hours to make everything ready, and I had already made the lining, half of the jacket and some things for the pockets! x__x
One can't see the buttons in the jacket since the buttonholes are hidden under the facing - we decided to be ninjas since the buttons can't be seen in the reference picture either.
The most difficult thing to make was probably the collar. I've tried to make a similar collar before but without good results. This time, however, I managed to make it quite well!
I didn't have time to take pictures during the making process but there really wasn't much to photograph (and at some point the whole costume got on my nerves and I was ready to go into the rubbish bin).
Anyway, here's the end result (some kind of preview at the same time)! Pictures © my brother.

I'll wear the same shoes which I wore when I cosplayed Levi in 2014. I had no time to search another shoes so those will do this time.

But here it is, the blog post about my North Italy! See you at Tracon, vee~!

(Oh, and I bought my Italy wig from Lucaille WIG. I had a huge headache while doing the preview so I decided not to wear it but you'll see it in the photoshoot pics - and probably in a bunch of stupid selfies I'll post on FB and Instagram.)

-Firith