Echo from Pandora Hearts Cosplay Breakdown

 Echo from Pandora Hearts

Echo was definitely not the type of character I'm used to cosplaying. Her personality is way more passive and quiet then I am used to. Nevertheless I was still for some reason drawn to her. I liked the transition from quiet/passive to ultra bad ass in an instant. After watching Pandora Hearts for the first time I really fell in love with the series. Originally I had felt like making this would be pretty strait forward, however it proved to be much more of a challenge than I had originally anticipated.

The first issue I ran into was the fact that Echo, like many anime characters, suffers from "Anime Proportions." You all probably know what I'm talking about here. In this case Echo has these freakishly long legs, while still being one of the shortest characters. This would be an issue for me considering I'm 5'8" and a full grown adult >.<

But by adjusting the pattern a bit I was able to make it some what proportioned to my body. Granted it meant making a shorter skirt than I'm comfortable wearing. Luckily I had some shorts to wear underneath..

The pattern was hand drafted, and I started off with the blue dress as a base. I wanted to have the white center peice actually connect the dress in the front, but later I decided that might be a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen, so I "faked it" so to speak.

 

 That is an example of the dress base. This is a later picture when I added the buttons on it, becasue I didn't get a picture of it initially. 

After making the dress, I decided to move on to the sleeves next since I needed the dress done to fit them properly.

Originally I got super excited about this cosplay simply for the fact that I didn't have to attach the sleeve to anything SINCE I HATE DOING THAT. But really these turned out to me just as big of a pain. Three failed pattern attempts later, I had things going.

 I marked my designs on it first using sewing chalk

On top of the strange design, this sleeve posed another issue for me.

Bias....

I decided the best way to achieve the look in the ref pictures was to use bias. I'm not use to sewing it with such detail, so it took me a while. I suppose the extra time paid off though, because the designs on the sleeve didn't turn out NEAR as bad as I thought it would.

My dog looks so enthusiastic..

After finishing the bottom I added a cuff at the top and Ta-Duh! My weird unattached sleeve was finished!

I made a second sleeve and then moved on to the front white piece.

I drafted the pattern and double the fabric so it would be nice and sturdy. After that I got to try the automatic button hole maker on my new sewing machine.

I got way too excited about this..

GAHHH I love that feature!! The old sewing machine I was using didn't have this and I had to do it by hand. I can't imagine ever doing one now without this! I made 8 button holes in a flash, and it couldn't have been easier.

Double checking to see if it looked right..

And there.. After that things were starting to come together. I marked where I wanted the button to go on the blue dress underneath. But before I could put the buttons on I had to solve a small issue. 

I needed the right color buttons.

In the ref pictures, they are a really nice periwinkle color (that was my favorite color as a child :3) the problem was in my local fabric stores, this color button only came with 2 in packs of 8, and I wasn't about to buy 5 packs of buttons just to get 2 of the colors I needed. I probably would have been able to buy them online somehwere, but I was short in time so I improvised..

So I decided to hand paint all of them!

I used acrylic paint to achieve the exact color I wanted. However the paint I used created some what of a powered matte finish on the buttons, and I knew it would come off with the slightest scratch. To solve this issue, I used a good old clear coat to make it shine and protect the paint.

The result was awesome! They ended up looking like I bought them that way.

After that the buttons were attached to the blue dress as illustrated earlier, and they seemed to line up OK!

The tie was also made during that time, which you can see in the photo. I just used some left over black satin and ribbon bias to make it. It attaches in the front with velcro :)

From here on it was crunch time, and I didn't get as many pictures. For the dress shirt underneath I found a mens dress shirt from the thrift store and added my own sleeves to it. I made hand pressed ruffles for it that would stick out of the blue sleeves. After that I put the finishing touches on it by adding the covered buttons near the armpit area and attaching ribbon to them, which ran through previously made loops on the detachable sleeves to the back where the bows were. 

In case you have no clue what I'm talking about.

While it looks like in the ref pics that the sleeve is held on entirely by that button loop system, I was worried it may not hold or sit properly so I sewed the sleeve to the top of the armpits on the blues dress just in case. As a result it was much more secured, and I was still able to move just fine in it.

 Test run!

After that things were pretty much done besides the stockings. I threw those together real fast and basically made them boot covers to go over my shoes. for this costume I styled my first wig as well. I used a Jaguar in Silver from Arda wigs, which can be used for another costume as well. My contacts were grey, and purchased from Pinky. I want to start getting in the habit of reviewing lenses as I buy them so look for that soon.

Photo by Daniel Ramirez. Do not use or alter without consent.

After all that here is the final result! 

I'm excited to report I won my first craftsmanship award with this costume at
Nebraskon 2012!

Guess all that work paid off :) This actually ended up being a pretty fun costume to make! I was very happy to see it come together and even more excited to win an award for it. I'm planning on wearing this again soon and hope to maybe get some pictures with other Pandora Hearts Cosplayers. I haven't seen many around my local conventions, however I did see another Echo cosplayer at Nebraskon which was neat :D

Anyways sorry for the somewhat abrupt end to this write up. The holidays are already keeping me really busy so finding time to update stuff is beginning to get difficult. But I'm looking forward to next year with new con's and new costumes :) 

See you soon!

-QK

Silk Maiden Alice: The "WTF Was I Thinking Making This" Cosplay

So now that Naka-kon is over and it has been debuted, I'm going to post how i made my American Mcgee's Alice Silk Maiden cosplay.
This was one of my top favorite dresses in the game and I wanted to cosplay it SO badly. The problem was the FABRIC. There is NOTHING out there that comes even close to matching this dresses fabric pattern, so I had no idea what to do. I ran into a friend on DA though who had done the cosplay and had hand painted all of the fabric and said, "Why didn't I think of that!"(Her Account) Her dress was incredible and I was so impressed with the painting. I initially thought there was no way I could do it, but after I speaking with her and getting some helpful hints and encouragement, I decided to give it a try. After all what could I lose? (except a shit load of money)
Why a bunch of money?

Because Neopaque Fabric Paint is expensive as shit.

Its about 5 bucks a bottle and I needed A LOT of it.

Using a different paint wasn't really an option since everyone I talked about this (which was a lot) said, "OMG Neopaque or nothing, it's the best!" So I used it, and was very glad I did. That stuff is legit.

But we'll get to the painting later..
To begin I hand drafted a pattern.
I used muslin so I could put it on my purty new dress form and adjust it as needed. This was the first time hand drafting a pattern on my own so it was a learning experience. My friend taught me how to do it on muslin, but I also had been show the same thing with newspaper. So to practice using both I drafted Saeko's shirt with newspaper and Alice's dress with muslin since it was more appropriate. This all may seem like a given to you all who have more experience, but I'm new at this so STFU. I know its all very basic :'(

I winged it on the shapes for the bodice and was lucky it tuned out OK. The rest was pretty self explanatory, a lot of rectangles and such.

After getting the pattern I liked, I started painting..

Started with the sleeves. I used Neopaque Lumieres paint because I hoped it would make the flowers look like they were apart of the silk, or screen painted. I used super opaque neopaque white as a base so the colors would POP.

I taped everything down on top of some newspaper so it wouldn't move or mess up my mom's nice table.

I got lazy and lost the newspaper eventually. I had to do this in the kitchen and our TV in there doesn't have cable, just a DVD player. So I busted out my Ghost in the Shell DVD's and some good old Metalocalypse to get me though all the painting.

As I made this I attempted to make get my painting as close as i could to the reference pictures I screen capped. Not just in how the flower's, leaves, and butterflies looked, but also where they were placed. It didn't end up perfect but it was pretty damn close.

I used an iron on the back of each piece per the paint's instructions to set the paint or whatever.

When I first started doing this I was all like..

Then I got to the largest piece and..

I trudged through though.

Last thing to paint was the Apron. I just used the same muslin I used for pattern make and doubled it up when I was finish painting it.

(Symbols don't show up every well thanks to my camera phone.)

After All painting was done the next thing I did was construct the top.

Starting to look more like a Kimono!

I made the Ruffle for the neck line next. I cut some strip of fabric using my Muslin again and folded them over. Then I pressed them and pinned them so my ruffles wouldn't look derpy since I'm not talented enough to make them as I put it through the machine yet.

The result..


After making the ruffle I sandwiched it between the painted fabric pieces and some duplicate pieces I made so I could line it, then sewed it closed.

I attached them at the shoulders..

And there you go!

So pwetty :o I attached the sides and then basted my skirt and attached it to the bottom. Before I attached the sleeves I drafted a pattern for my apron and obi. As you can see from the picture, for the inside of my obi I used a very stiff interfacing. I'll get to that more later... >o>

Then next there was sleeves... God I hate sleeves.

First I sewed the ribbons onto the cuffs. That was very time consuming but good practice for sewing strait lines, holy crap. Next I basted my sleeves and made that oh so wonderful POOF. I have to say I did significantly better basting/sewing these sleeves compared to my first Alice costume, which made me happy :).

.... stupid sleeves. Now back to the obi. Instead of layering this with two pieces of stiff interfacing to get the two different colors, I stuck with one to avoid making it super bulky. What I did was I covered the interfacing piece with the light pink fabric first by making a "tube" for it, then sewed the dark pink on top of that, making this..

Sorry, photo is upside down.. Then to make it somewhat adjustable but still secured, I sewed a few pieces of Velcro to each side.

The bow was attached via two humongous snap buttons that I don't have a picture of. The Bow itself was essentially just two long rectangle met together then the dark pink one was placed on top of the light pink one and sewed together.

For the obi's mask... I originally made this out of a different material and it was a colossal failure. My first one looked better than the final product, because model magic is really hard to get nice details out of, but you live and learn I guess :( For the second version, I drew out the size I wanted on paper then used an aluminum foil base and covered it with model magic. I sculpted the features, let it dry, then painted over it with acrylic and sealed it all with Modge Podge. After that I covered the back of it with felt and hot glued two long clips to the back which slid easily into the bows holding it in place :)

Last (even though it wasn't made last) we have my underskirt. Since in the game if you look up Alice's skirt (not that I did or anything) you can see that she does have a petticoat underneath, and the the ruffle isn't just attached to the bottom. I could have just attached it to the bottom, but I did that with my wonderland Alice, and in a few photographs I noticed it showing and it really bothered me that I didn't put something underneath. So I decided to do it right with this dress. This was pretty strait forward.. I sewed a long tube out of an even lighter pink then I used for the obi, and then pinned it into a ruffle on the edge of my shear fabric.

After sewing it, I gathered the top over some elastic that fit my waist and closed it up.

And then when you put all those things together you get...

ALICES'S SILK MAIDEN DRESS!!

The top two photo's don't include the turquoise and dark blue cords that tie around the obi, I wore them later. Other than that, There it is! This cosplay was really a challenge and a blast to make. If you have any questions feel free to contact me! You can find all my profiles under my contact tab ^.^ Thanks so much for taking the time to check out my process. I'll leave you with a few photos taken by the amazing Max Phillips! If you want to see more make sure you visit my Deviant Art page and have a look! Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Caterpillar to find.. Photo by Vangaurd Imageworks Image is subject to copyright do not use or alter without consent *Click to see full size!* Photo by Vangaurd Imageworks Image is subject to copyright do not use or alter without consent *Click to see full size!* Photo by Vangaurd Imageworks Image is subject to copyright do not use or alter without consent *Click to see full size!* Thanks for stopping by! -QK