Cosplay Progress - Final Fantasy XIII-2 Serah Farron, Bag 0.4

As you can see Serah Farron comes with this handy dandy bag that hangs off her waist.  Does that mean it's a duffle bag?  And I played the game through, she doesn't use the thing once! so what the heck is it for?

I didn't wnat to work with the bag panel by panel, so I made the front/bottom/top/back all out of one strip.  I put a band across it with some grey silk like fabric on to of white canvas.

Folding it into the odd shape I cut out more white canvas to match

Whoops I guess my grey panels didn't align properly.  Oh well.

Now for the waist band.  I'm using this shiny vinyl material which will also be used for the skirt.

Sewing two strips together for strength.

Drawing the cirlces and cutting them out after the sides have been sew together.  This will make it an accurate match.

Using the Piping concept.  To give texture to the edge of the waist band, I'm filling and sewing in a pipe (some extra satin cord I had laying around).

For the button I cut out a circle from the left over vinyl, and glued on a pink bead I made from air dry clay.   There's a lot of gold trim around the bag that I will create using long strips of the vinyl. 

I do admit that the gold vinyl for the bag trim doesn't look as refined as if i used real piping, or just put more TLC into it.  But I'm taking a lot of time to finish this Serah outfit, so any short cuts will make an over all difference. 

Cosplay Progress - Final Fantasy XIII-2 Serah Farron, Boots 0.3

I was going to go to the clearance store and try to get a flip flop shoe with the extra thick sole, but found this ugly rubber shoe instead.  It's PERFECT

I cut out fabric pieces from felt to cover the shoe to make it more of a boot style with it's straps.

I glued the laces into the inside of the flap.

Ok I lost the front strap in the process because got glue doesn't stick to rubber, so I had to with Industrial super glue.  But now I have the perfect Serah shoes

Cosplay Progress - Final Fantasy XIII-2 Serah Farron, Base of the Dress 0.1

I've always had problems with zippers, and being a self taught sewer, how else can I get a form fitting outfit without being resourceful.  Use DanceWear fabric.  It's stretchy and thick (less of that see through crap). 

Making a double layer tub top is done in less than 20 minutes.  As for the Pink dress, I'm going to leave it separate from the tube top and have it held up with pant elastics which I will dye the crimson colour. 

It's not very clear in the design of how the pink works into the bottom of the dress but I chose to make it one piece instead of two hanging segments.  This way I am sure that when the fabric shifts due to movement it doesn't start flapping around and will always stay centered.

I know this picture looks a little weird, but dont all projects at the beginning?

Cosplay Progress - Final Fantasy XIII-2 Serah Farron Research 0.0

I saw this at PAX and couldn't move.  Serah's one of the primary characters of Final Fantasy XIII-2.  I've done Lighting from both XIII and XIII-2, and I've done Serah from XIII, so it's only fitting that I rought it off by doing her from XIII-2.  And her cross bow it AWESOME.

At this moment I dont know if I can do her crossbow, it might to a little too far advanced for me.  Also watching the PAX Prime trailer and apparently the Moogle turns into a crossbow.  I have plans on making a Moogle (but i can't give away all my secret plans yet), so if I fail at making the crossbow or just dont have the time for it than the Moogle will be fine.  Besides wouldn't the Moogle just not make sense if I am also carrying the cross bow?

Cosplay Progress - Final Fantasy XIII-2 Lightning Wing 0.3

Today we'll be focusing on the feather skirt on the left side of Lightning.  I dont know what to call it, I thought of it as a wing, but a girl on DeviantArt referred to it as a feather skirt which sounds more appropriate.  This project ended up turning out a lot better than I assumed it would and costed less than I assumed.  I bought $25 in feathers and ended up only using 2/3s of it.

Ingredients

1. A Few Large Trimmed Feathers
2. A Few More Media Trimmed Feathers
3. A Lot More Small Trimmed Feathers
4. A Lot More Small Fluffy *cheap* Feathers
5. Buckram or some other stiff white fabric. We don't want a flimsy fabric or else it won't keep it's shape, but we dont want stiff material because it should still flow a little in the wind as you walk.  Another alternative would be craft foam.  Honestly I used Buckram just because it's light, white, and just sitting in front of my face while I was thinking about this project.
6. Hot Glue

1)      Cut out a piece of buckram in the shape of an outline of the wing.  It will serve as the backing for the wing, and we will be trimming it later

2)      We want a single feather to be our tip, start with one large feather and lay it pointing out of the bottom tip of the wing, remember that the buckram is serving as our outline so stay inside the lines.

3)      Glue the tip of the bone to the buckram.  We want to limit how much glue we use for several reasons.  A) more glue means more weight which adds no value.  B) more glue down the bone means less freedom for it to shift in the wind.

4)      From there we continue moving up arranging and gluing the large feathers. Follow these arrangement guidelines.

a.       The bone tip should be near the vertical center of the buckram.  Never glue near the edge of the buckram.

b.      Arrange the feathers in different angles but all pointing down (South, Southeast, or Southwest).  Making them all parallel will make it look too manicured. 

c.       Don’t put them all in a row, vary the vertical and horizontal placement of the feathers

5)      Once you’re done with the large feathers you can begin mixing feathers.  Start off my covering a horizontal area* with the fluffy feathers to completely cover up the buckram.  Keep the same guidelines as above, especially not gluing to the edge of the buckram.

*Only do one horizontal area at a time so you can layer the feathers on top of each other as you continue up.

  

6)      Lay a few of the trimmed feathers on top of the fluffy feathers.  You can mix the medium and small feathers, or you can use the medium first and the smaller ones up north.  Up to you.

7)      Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you’ve reached the top.  Because the top line is covered up my the belt for lightning you can skip this step, but I’ll include it for anyone who’s making a wing for other projects. Cover the top row with fluffy feathers.  In this case they should point to all different direction and glue up and past the edge.  The fluffy feathers should use one another to try to cover up their bones.

8)      Now you’re complete with one side of the wing.  Time to start trimming.  We want to trim off as much of the “boarder” of the buckram so that the feathers on the edge are hanging off.  I try to cut off as close to any glued spots as possible. 

Depending on your project you may not need a back, or you may need to only fill up a portion of the back, or may need to fill up all.  Just remember to think about your cosplay being viewed from all angles of a sphere.  In the case of Lightning, pieces of the inner side of the wing will be visible as I walk, so I do want to cover it up. 

9)      I usually more of the nicer feathers for the front and save more of the cheaper feathers for the back since they won’t be viewed as often.  From here you repeat steps 4-7 again.