Amira's coat - chyrpy

The first challenge with chyrpy was the pattern. In real life the chyrpy looks slightly different than in manga. It is much more wider in manga and the sleeves are bigger.

Original/historical chyrphy (image I found from pinrest. Sadly I could not track the original author of this photo)

I constructed the pattern in multiply steps. The first one was the bodice. Getting the right shape. This time, as chyrpy has totally different fit than blouse, I went slightly different direction than with blouse. The main motivator was the bottom part. As I can clearly see a cut at the back, I decided I will use two pieces for the back and use slight curve in the back seam to make it fit better. For the front, another two pieces. Thanks to the fact that it has large opening in front, I did not needed any triangles and was able to do the front in one piece too.

Basic pattern drawing

Back front and connection to sleeves

Mock up in progress

First mock up over the rest of the costume

When I was happy with my bodice mock-up, I looked on the "skirt" part of chyrpy. It was very wide and "flying"/"floating" in manga.. Always having nice flow when Amira is moving. Therefore it had to be wider than in real life. I just added more width and did a mock up. I was worried that it will start to look weird on the sides as the folds are going to gather there and the front, connected directly under the bodice will not have any big folds. I was considering doing the skirt and bodice in separate pieces but I think they should be one (as in original chyrpy). I think I managed to figure out how to divide the width and make it look nice. The volume of the skirt also helpes a lot.

It was slightly wider in the end

Few more mock ups and in the end, I was happy with the pattern:

 I ran out of that horrible stupid pinkish fabric I used for mock ups (I really hated myself when I brought it for Lucrezia as it did not fit at all with what I needed. The really good thing about non-desired fabrics is.. you can use them to make mock ups :P). So.. the final mockup for chyryp was done with nicer silver fabric I originally got for Fullmetal Alchemist costume but decided to be silverish and too shiny for the costume. It does look little weird over this costume :P

I did not figure out the sleeves at the beginning. It was totally mayhem with them. The look so nice on manga but in reality it is not very easy to do the pattern. I have the idea of dividing sleeves into two parts and do it like that but at first, I just wanted to do some embroidery as I knew it will be horribly time consuming.

This time I was smarter. I knew there will be errors and I learn a lot during the process. As I would be using mouline instead of machine embroidery thread, I did first few test runs on the "ribbon". I am not even sure. It does look like ribbon in some manga drawings but I found nothing of using ribbons in chyrpy or any other that kind of "coaty" piece of clothing. There were some ribbons use in Ottomon clothing but they looked nothing like this and ribbons were very narrow. So, I still assume it is the embroidery. Looking on the chyrpy, I thought this should be the Turkmen stitch. I did few trials and found it to be not very nice looking. Maybe I did something wrong but it just did not hold its form they way I saw it in chyrpys. I tried, again, to find more on the stitches used but nothing new or enlightening was found. So, I decided to go with three lines of chain next to each other.

Stitching in wool was nightmare! When linen (both the nice white one I used for skirt or the red for rest of the clothing) were quite stiff, wool was not. After first frame of stitching and removing it, the fabric was left wavy, stitches were constricting and pulling..oh, not nice at all. I undid everything :(

So.. second try. I went with stabilizer. This time, as mouline was much stronger thread, pulling the thread when tearing stabilizer off was not the problem. It looked slightly better but not much as you can see from below:

Then it was my sister who gave me the best idea ever - use adhesive fabric. Sounded like a win. As I have previously overdone the adhesive fabrics, I was very careful not to choose too thick adhesive fabric to keep the nice flow of the wool. I went with almost the softest one I could find and got a lot of it. In the end, I think it was slightly little too weak.

So, I undid everything and started from the beginning, first covering all of the fabric with adhesive on the back side:

I mean, the result was definitely better than before but it still had problems. First of all - adhesive fabric was coming off all the time so i was back and forward doing the ironing over and over again. Also not all of this "waviness" was ridiculed, so the best option, that I used for the project in the end was using both machine embroidery stabilizer with adhesive fabric. That actually worked nice but it was still ironing after every frame that seemed to be the key.

Some of the waviness is still there at the beginning when I did not had the stabilizer. The later part is much nicer

  For the flower embroidery (I think they are flowers. They should be from my research - many young girls in the area had a lot of flower embroidery on their clothes) I used pieces of felt as the base of the flowers. I used round paper cutting tool to create those circles. The poor device was not able to handle felt, so I broke it down and used scissors to force the top part free after pressing the imprint to the felt. Then, carefully, with scissors I cut free the parts that machine failed to cut out.

 It took me few tries to figure out the most "thread effective" way of doing those flowers. I mean, this whole thing was swallowing mouline like hungry shark..

Black is the thread on main side, greyish is thread on back side

I could have done all those lines in a row to save even more thread but it felt that doing this kind of "divide-and-conquer" made sure that the result is more even.

Flowers and ribbons in process

The main thing was that I tried to have reasonable length threads so that I should not merge them all the time. But on the other hand,it meant, that at the beginning, I usually had huge mess, like this:

First, as I had learned, I did the back parts' bottoms before moving to the front:

 

So, I first finished the bottoms at the back. Then I took the front pieces. Did a bottom for one of the front pieces, sewed them together from bottom to waist and did the embroidery over the connection. Doing the embroidery over the connection was hard and messy. First of all. There is the seam. I tried to move it one way and another on the frame and used needle to get the thread through it but it was messy.. And then.. I realized that the embroidery at back is wider (and much nicer.. the black lines clearly visible) than in front. Damn. I slept on it (and had nightmares of bad embroidery :P) and the next day I took everything I had done in the front apart. It took me 2 hours to undo work of a week. Luckily I could salvage the flowers and I was faster when redoing it, so.. 3 days..

Then I did the line up to the waist on the connection seam. Again.. I needed to flip the seam as I worked.. so, one line up.. switch the seam.. another two lines..

So, at this point it was middle of June. My husband actually started to really worry about me and the work I still need to do. He actually tried to convince me not to undo the first front but I did some math and realized that if I do a lot of embroidery each day, I can make it.. so, for a week at this point.. every free moment has gone to embroidery. There has been progress but yeah.. I think that point I was really having doubts that I have taken on something too big. The amount of work I put into this is not going to be worth it.. and yeah.. so.. a lot of doubts.. (I tried to lower my stress by working on jewelry)

So, after all of the bottoms were done, I started to move "up" with my embroidery, ending somewhere around "waist" and then doing the sleeves. I had not figured out the sleeve pattern at the beginning as it was so much trickier than I expected first. So, now I had to deal with it. I went back to the drawing board (I mean, the floor). More mock-ups until I got the sleeve figured out. I used the same pattern in the end as for the main blouse, cut it the other way (to had sewing line in top), made it larger, modified the fit so that it would be more "closer to neck" than blouse sleeve. Then some math on paper to get the right widening at the top.

The only problem (or suggestion) I could think of was that the mock up should also have been made from stronger fabric as the nice light one was dropping much better than the much stronger wool.

Then, it was back to embroidery. I think the neatest embroidery is on the sleeves. They were very easy to work with - nice straight lines (with small curves) and for that time I had so much practice that my style was very neat and continues.

After the sleeves were mostly done, I went back to the bodice and started to combine the pieces together. As the wool was very "stretchy" and the constant ironing was hurting a little bit, the lines were not there anymore where they were supposed to. So to sew everything (4 pieces) together was a nightmare. In the end, I just made sure the bottoms are correct and then tried to make the top fit.

Lesson learnt: embroidery on stretchy fabric is a nightmare all possible ways. I also discovered that I had made a mistake - the side lines.. one of them goes all the way to bottom line, the other.. finishes with top line. Ups. I did correct it later!

When I had managed to make everything fit, it was also first time for me to actually try it on. (This hand sign was apparently how to take selfies with my tablet :P) It felt amazing. Months of embroidery finally had some result.

Then, working on the back! As the back had a curve, it was hard to make sure the tambour had straight fabric only. Also, some small areas were tricky. And as I was in country most of the time, I had very old iron there that I was afraid (ala it will burn the thread, leave marks...)

During my summer holiday, I was non stop working on the embroidery. I woke up, I started watching ER and doing the embroidery. I did took a break for lunch (or jewelry) , continued till late hours of the night. Like really. That was the whole month! I was so sick of it in the end but I forced myself to keep going. It was specially hard when there was such a nice weather and I was just indoors. And sometimes it was so cold that my fingers were like non-responsive and had to light a fire to get some warmth (it was horribly cold this summer). And some of those elements took so long.. I think those squares at the back.. to do one took 2 whole days.. :( Non-stop... I am glad I was watching ER. It has 14 seasons. Hard to run out of episodes :D

In the end, I had the parts I could do without sewing things together done. The thing I learn from the blouse was that if you have to have embroidery in connecting areas, sew them together first, then do the embroidery. It will be trickier but the result will be nicer. So, next step - sewing sleeves on and doing those embroideries. It was so slow dealing the the lines.. I could only use small tambourine, the fabric was so thick there that it did not want to fit inside the tambourine.. it kept poping up.. etc.. I had  screwdriver as constant tool I was using in embroidery as this was the only way I was able to handle the thickness and tambourine.

And then it was the top and some other small things. I actually redid the front top lines as they were slightly off. I redid something in the back too. Just making it all fit when the fabric is stretchy.. I do not want to do that ever again.

In mean while, the summer past, it was end of August when I finally did the last small stitches and corrected the side line. I think I really did the last stitch on the last day of August making the whole coat take exactly 4 months!

And then there was the lining I left to the last minute before the con. I just had to do it but I was so afraid of it. In the end, two days in the evenings after work.. hand-sewing the lining. Adding eyes and hooks and then it was done.. all of it.. :)

Photo by: Eugene Art Photography

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Amira's blouse

The blouse meant first bigger challenge. First of all - it had much more complex embroidery than I had done so far (and last time I ever did any embroidery was grade 8 I think almost 15 years ago.. and I was horrible at it).

Second (and much bigger problem) was that the embroidery design was not constant in manga. It looked nice and in "same style" but not the same. I was just browsing the mangas over and over again to figure out what are the common parts of the design but in the end, I just went to copy machine and copied (with magnification) around 30+ pages, set them on the floor and tried to make sense that way.

The honest answer: no - there was not a common theme or pattern. Some of the manga images, that were next to each other had same kind of pattern but from scene to scene  but they were never same from place to place in manga. Very different and varying (you could argue that she had more than one blouse put :P). Therefore.. I decided not to figure out the exact style from multiply images but I went with the cover of first volume. It only shows half of the sleeve, so.. that was my reference. I used other scenes to see how usually one side correlates to another side and "created" the parts that were not visible on the cover by myself. Let's just say - it took more time and effort than I first thought.

 Then. Starting with the blouse. To be honest, the first try was counted as failure in the end but let's go with the flow as I did. I first cut out the pieces of nice red linen, sewed them together (not the right move, will explain later) and then started doing the embroidery.

Mess in the floor when I try to figure out the pattern

The pattern was very simple as from my research into Turkmenistan national costumes, I did not find any specific patterns but what was stated was that they did not had anything too complex and usually blouses consisted of just simple slightly modified rectangles. So, I went slightly above it for better fit but I did not use any specific pattern from outside sources. From the front I have triangles at the sides to fit better with breasts and on the back, I actually used three pieces (one central, two at the sides) with slight curves for better fit in waist. I could probably have used rectangles there too but I thought, as it is going to visible anyway, that separate pieces give better fit and look nicer. Sleeves were very simple rectangle shapes with matching curves at the top to fit the bodice.

Mock-up. Looks good but way too long

Ah, I just had enough fabric :D

 For the choice of stitch for the emboridery, from my research, I thought, chain is the most suitable. On most of the images from manga the embroidery on blouse was like a line, therefore chain would fit perfectly. In very few rare pictures the embroidery on blouse did looked like satin stitch but that goes into the line of inconsistencies from author. I used the same machine embroidery thread for chain stitch as I used for underwear (3 threads together).

Putting sewn together blouse into a frame and drawing the pattern guide

I started with the blouse, did the collar first, then the bodice in front, moved to back (not the right move, will explain later).. Then I did the sleeves that were not sewn onto the bodice. As I said, the first try was failure.

Not the best embroidery..

The main reasons:
 *I had not use the specific chain stitch tool that was historically used in the area before so I would highly recommend practicing a lot. I would say my first bodice was my "trial piece" in the end.. I just wish I could have chosen easier route.. like just random straight piece of fabric

*The tambour embroidery requires it all to be very stable and tight. As in the image above- it was not. Sewing everything together was my biggest mistake in this step! Embroidery first, then cutting out.
*I tried using machine embroidery stabilizer (to overcome previous problem) but when tearing it off, it just ruined the embroidery and did not worked very well at all. Waste of time!

So, when I finally got to sleeves, my embroidery skill had developed a lot. I finally managed to have nice tight framing of the fabric (as nothing was sewn) and everything looked just so much better.

Actually, if you look one of these, the bottom embroidery around wrist is much better on left one but much lower quality of right one

Close up.

So, after I finished the sleeves, I just could not bare looking on the bodice, I went back to the fabric shop, got more of this red linen and did it all over again. Considering I spent 2-3 weeks on bodice, that was a blow but I was just so much better on this now.

So, first of all - I did not cut anything out before the embroidery. It was huge amount of fabric to move around but it worked so much better this time. Much less tearing and unevenness after the embroidery

 This is the nice compassion of the improvement of my skill. The top one is the second try, the one at the bottom is the first try

 And the back redone. Yeah, here I actually had to do some sewing as I decided to have three pieces but it was still quite flat and in some places I used smaller frame.

Then I did some sewing. First it was the top of the front and backs (and completed the lines at the sides that you can see on back but not in front). Then I sewed the sleeves into the bodice but sides and sides of the sleeves were open. I also needed to add the line for the sleeves. I did not dare to do it before sewing them together to make sure they are evenly distanced from the seam.

I sadly do not remember exactly what was the problem but those lines were huge amount of work and I redid them at least twice. I think the distance from the seam was the problem. Other than that - just stitch the line and then those little nods after some distance. Making those nods match was also not possible before sewing it together.

Then the lining. That was the moment I was heavily thinking if I would afford the silk or not. It should have been silk but silk was so expensive. I looked on artificial silk but it was not the right color, looked very weird (the quality) and was also much more expensive than I would have liked. So, in the end, it was the common lining material I used. Little unauthentic but practical thinking won - if I would have gone with silk, it would have cost a lot and noone can see it as it is lining. Probably not many people know anyway about the right materials so.. yeah.. something in me feels sad about this compromise.

Stitching the lining together (you can also see my super cute pin holder seal :D)

 

I set the lining, fixed it with pins and handsaw everything together. It all looks super nice in the end and it felt so nice to finally finish it. It took me around 2 months to do it. Most of it was embroidery that is just super time consuming. I spent all my weekend almost non-stop doing it and the first failed attempt was a blow.

The only thing left was how to close the blouse. In one or two images I can see buttons in manga. In majority of images there are nothing as it is easy to draw clothes to be "just on". Historically it is a mix. For the chyrpy it is no question - hook-and-eye closure. I found material about that. I did found other nations around the area who used hook-and-eye for most costumes around 19th century. But buttons were also heavily used on surrounding areas, specially for blouses. So, in the end, I could not find one certain answer for this and I went with "look". As on manga, you cannot see button on the cover, I use hook-and-eye to hide the openings and it would make it easier to but it on and take it off.

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