Amira's skirt and trousers

After the underwear, I did the trousers as I found it to be "easier" than other prospective parts. The pattern for them was very easy as I found from the literature that very simple and wide trousers were used. I actually even found a drawing (small drawing in scientific paper) how the trousers looked. So, I did the pattern, keeping in mind that the trousers seemed to have a buff around the boots. (The thing I did not consider was how the trousers affect the boots :P I did remembered it luckily in the end when I made boots).

The sewing was very simple. I did not use waistband as there were none mentioned in the literature - only cords. The bottom was covered with embroidery inspired by the refernce:

So, the result:

The skirt was trickier as I started to realize that different images in manga have different embroidery for the skirt. My main reference had two layers of spikes and the first test I did for the skirt (that was probably way before I actually started making anything and while I was still doing the research) was done with machine:

It was way too big, not natural and did not had this feel I desired. (Plus the red was off but I mean, I hadn't found the right die from literature yet).

So, I dropped the idea of machine embroidery for skirt quite early and the underwear actually only convinced me that this was the right choice.

The reference problem remained:

 My main reference (right) had this more complex embroidery but the secondary (left) had embroidery style that was much more often used in other covers and on manga. So, I was little torn. Do everything as in one image or use the most "common" style. I went with common at this point but later (with the blouse), when I realized there is no common ground, I continued using only the main image.

Then.. it was just hand embroidery and lot of threads of red mouline. It took me around two months I think? I loved that on the volume 2 and 6 cover I could actually see the stitches and mimick them :) It was much nicer than just figuring how to fill a red line.

On reference the skirt has really nice volume so instead of just full circle I used three halfs. It had nice volume on its own but in the end, the hard coat is "taking down" the volume. (I ofcourse hated the three halfs due to the fact that it took 1/3 more time to do the embroidery. Imagine.. everything else had some variety. With skirt it was just same thing over and over again for meters. I think I actually measured the outer side of the skirt. I do not remember precisely but was it 8 meters? And three lines + those spikes.. It was very monothone).

 Again, no waistband as it was not used in the area On this image above I have horrible modern cord. In the end, I found nice cotton cord that had this kind of natural white (not bleached) look o fit perfectly with the fabric of the skirt.

(Later I actually found image from manga where Amira's skirt is visible that proved me again that cords and tunnels were used and that fact was also known by the manga's author):

(This image has different closure to the top than my version but as I said - I discovered this much later. I actually think it was in August? I was making skirt and trousers at the beginning of the year. That was one of the surprising things. I thought I covered the mangas very thoroughly before I started but during the process, I sometimes were just flipping pages and I found new details I had missed like tens of times before..) 

Here it is: trousers and skirt. Looking very nice :) I really love the volume of the skirt and I was little sad the coat pushed it down so much.


Posts:
*Getting started
*Underwear
*Skirt and trousers
*Blouse
*Coat
*Jewelry
*Boots
*Accessories
*At Animatsuri
*At Eurocosplay

Amira's underwear

The first thing I did with the project was the underwear. It is slightly stupid, considering that no one can see it as I would be wearing it under everything else. But on the manga, it was visible and it sounded like a great idea how to try out the fabrics, methods and get started.

I went with simple cotton for the fabric for the underwear. It could also have been silk. When I did my research into the central Asia clothing, there were almost 0 information I could find about underwear. So, I had to use my own imagination. For me, the central asian clothing sounded very practical and it had to have materials that were available. Therefore the choice for me was between cotton and silk. Considering that silk is more fragile and clothing should be durable, I though using the cotton sounds more feasible.

Then, the embroidery. The manga nicely shows the details of Amira's underwear and my original plan was use machine embroidery. So, I designed the embroidery files for machines. I do not have fancy machine. Quite simple and very basic Husqvarna 600e so my options were limited. Specially with the top. I wanted those little arrows to have very specific angel for embroidery to match their angle on design. Sadly, my program that came with the machine did not allow me to have this. Also, some of the arrows were really nicely converted from design to embroidery design but some needed a lot of extra work

Main embroidery files, all together..

Also, some of the embroideries, like the top and bottom border needed more than one frame. Oh my.. switching between frames and trying to get it match. Some fancier machines, as I googled, do those control stitches so you can make sure everything is fine. In my case, nothing like that. And I can only have four frames - no larger designs that would obviously become very big problem later in the project.

Anyway, somehow I got my designs into the program and started the embroidery. It took ages. Again, I had used the machine for smaller projects before but this.. The needle became blunt and started to break the thread (ofcourse I did not know that breaking thread can be caused by blunt needle.. I endlessly tried to figure out what is wrong with machine settings). The connections were super hard.. in many cases I just had to fix the connection points in the end by hand. And then the main motive. Now, I am super sure that it should only have the outline embroidered but back then I thought all of it should be covered. It took quite long...  many hours..

In the end, all the embroidery was done, connection points fixed and I laid patterns (that I actually just made out of nowhere just looking on the reference on the manga) over the embroidery. That was one part where I did not had too much troubles. When the patterns were in position, I did the little holes at the back of the top.

Sewing was easy part. Trousers came out nice. I decided to line both the top and bottom. I would almost be sure that if central asian people wore underwear, it was not lined, but it hid all the bottom side of embroidery and having this nice material against my skin felt so much better than leaving then unlined.

The only challenge with the trousers was the fastening. On the manga, it looks like the trousers have no channel for the fastening - it is just trousers and then robe is used to keep it on place. Sounds actually feasible as my research showed that they used very simple patterns all around their clothing. Having only robe over the fabric to keep trousers up - sounded very unsafe for me, so I did make a tunnel for the robe to have safer fastening. The shape is off compared to how the fabric looks on manga but yeah.. I like to keep my trousers on.

The top was more problematic. I used the mannequin to do the pattern and check it. I did sew a mock up without the holes that also looked fine. But when I had everything tone for the top and I put a ribbon at the back to fix the top to place, I realized my mannequin (even if having smallest possible settings) is slightly larger than me.. so, the top is little too big. I hope to go back to it and fix it before the convention when I have time.

The ribbon at the top.. Again, you can almost see the texture of it in the manga. First I did a ribbon from yarn following simple braiding. Then, as I looked more and more on the texture I realized that i could probably copy that, So, instead of simple and very quick braiding with fingers I did some research to figure out how to braid that specific pattern. It took some time and it required much thinner yarn than I originally had but in the end - again - super happy to have more of the original details on the costume.

The one thing that bothered me slightly was that somewhere later I discovered that the design should probably not be filled but only the edges like in rest of the costume. And the propositions were off. So, it was always "to redo" list but I never got to it before Animatsuri as, yeah, it is underwear. No one can see it.

But after animatsuri, I went back to it. First, I undid the machine embroidery on trousers. That took days. I would not recommend it to anyone. Then, I went back to tambour embroidery to redo the central part with only outlines and better propositions. I actually took the design from that reference image, used perspective crop in PS, got it out of perspective and printed it out few times to get right dimensions. Doing the embroidery itself was easy.

I also redid the top to match it more like in source. I added in top of the current "tunnel" new side that can be "rolled" and that is sewn over the first tunnel making it look nicer but is more secure than just having this rolled top.

Also, after local qualification I did the socks. There were two images from the manga I found. One was the reference I used for long trousers and the other one was randomly discovered. They seem to have matching designs. I know that probably somewhere else there is another design as I saw one cosplayer to make very fancy socks. Sadly, I could not discover the reference (maybe it was not in the volumes I own and when switching between online scans, I missed it). I would have loved that design but hey.. I had to stick what I found.

So the first step was figuring out the pattern. I was sure that there is the main edge motive at the top and probably another where sole and main body are connected. But the motive on the socks was hardly visible on both images. So, I just looked the generic shape, looked on authentic embroidery done in Kazashtan/Turkmenistan and used my own imagination.

For the fabric I planned to use cotton I also used for the skirt (after I ruined a nice light cotton I specially bought for socks while trying to "weather" it with black tea. It worked little bit too well and white became brownish beige). My plan was to do the embroidery during a weekend before Eurocosplay when I was in countryside but somehow I had not put the fabric into the bag. Like seriously. I had everything else I needed and more and not this fabric. Luckily I had put another white fabric into my "make Amira costume while traveling" bag. It was super nice and super expensive linen-silk blend that I first got for the scarf but as it was so expensive, I only got it like for 25-30 cm that would have been one length of the scarf and I found it not to be long enough for this complicated thing she has at her hat. So this super expensive small piece of fabric was left without purpose and somehow forgotten in the bag. So, now it was perfect time to use it. It would be little bit fancier than I would have assumed for common socks (that can be expected to be worn a lot and probably be worn out quite quickly).

Anyway.. To to one side of the embroidery took more than 2 hours. So, 8 hours for total during the weekend. Then I got back home, I cut out the socks based on pattern that was deducted from foil/tape I used for boots patterns.  Sewing it together.

And then, next two evenings - non stop embroidery to the sides and top.

And then the weathering. I was much more careful with black tea this time. I got some darker spots but it did not do what I wanted. I tried to use spray bottle and black tea but still not exactly. In the end, I just went to the basement in the apartment where is concrete floor and lot of dust- that actually did miracles and I just danced around little bit on the basement until I got some wear on the areas foot is touching the ground. I used sanding paper a little to help to get some extra wear for the sole.

Back to the apartment and some washing and the socks looked like they have been worn by real person not just made like in the image at the top.

So, the socks were actually finished night before flying out to Eurocosplay and when they were drying, I just hoped I will not forgot them as otherwise last week of non-stop work would have been waste.

But yeah.. I started with underwear and finished the costume with socks :)


Posts:
*Getting started
*Underwear
*Skirt and trousers
*Blouse
*Coat
*Jewelry
*Boots
*Accessories
*At Animatsuri
*At Eurocosplay