22nd May 2011: The Smoking Pipe I would have put a nice little progress picture together, but I can't since photoshop has currently died on me XD

Anyway!

To make the pipe, I first got hold of a stick like base... which is actually a chopstick that CrystalNeko gave me XD I tried to make the first end (the end you would inhale the smoke) from Fimo, but quickly found out that wasn't going to work! I then went out and brought some air-dry clay instead, which worked out alot better! I made the first end, allowed it to dry, then made the top end (the part where you would put the tabacco) which was really hard! :S It has 3 wires inside to as it couldn't keep its shape by itself ^^;

So both ends dried and I then painted them with acrylics. I wanted the clay ends to be metalic silver, but since the paint I had brought was far too dark and I couldn't find anything lighter, I had to make do with what I could mix up... that ended up not being metalic XD

It has now been sprayed with my clear spray paint to keep the paint on and has been given a little bit of a shine 8D

In total, it's 13 inches in length. It doesn't have any of the pretty markings on it as I found that I'm not CLAMP and I cannot draw smoke like they can oTL

28th April 2011: Trousers So, for the trousers I am re-using the ones I made for my Nihon!Syaoran cosplay but I have altered them slightly.

I ripped up both of the bottom sems on legs so that I could make them wider and longer... they needed to fit over the boots rather than fit inside them this time XD Although it turned out that I couldn't make them that much bigger, turns out I had less of a sem in there than I thought >_>

But never mind! I then sewed up one side that the cloud would be going over and then bondawebbed + appliqued it on! Then then sewed up the last side and hemmed the bottom and they were done! Woo! 8D

22nd April 2011: Jacket complete! Yes! The jacket is finally finished! All of the bias binding was put on and I had brought 4 meters of it, and I JUST had enough to go around the entire jacket 8D I used poppers/snaps for the fastenings and they are hidden just under the bias binding.

So now that the jacket is done, all that's left is the trousers! ^^

14th April 2011: The collar I have made the collar. I hate them with such a passion. Now let us never speak of it again!

3rd April 2011: Applique finished! I personally liked doing the applique, but my sewing machine didn't XD We've had alot of arguements ¬_¬ But what you see is the finished result! Hurrah! Some of my "swirls" aren't very... circular however oTL

I decided to put a cloud on the back, took me awhile to make up my mind on that though 8D But my mum said to so I followed her advise for once XD

All of the applique has been ironed and is now nice and flat!

So now I'll start my next hated part of clothing: the collar DX

25th March 2011: Top cloud detailing This cosplay will kill my back by the time I've finished with it, too much bending over T_T

ANYWAY!

Firstly, I took apart the stitches of part of the shoulder sem so that when it came to the bondaweb, I could have it go down into the sem line and not have it look strange XD I then got all of the sections into the correct size/shape using my paper templates.

I then I used the bondaweb to put the yellow parts onto the white. I had a few hiccups on the way, due to my paper templates magically not being the correct shapes... which was rather weird :S

Then came the appliqueing! Oh how and my sewing machine argue over it XD But what you see is how it ended up!

Now to do the bottom half~

11th March 2011: Sleeve progress part 2 So, since the sleeves had been fully appliqued, it was now time to put them back into the jacket... Something that scares the crap out of me! It didn't go too well last time I did it on my School Uniform Watanuki cosplay ^^;

But I first stitched both sleeves down to make them sleeves shaped. I then carefully pinned both of them back inot the arm holes of the jacket (which took a couple of hours of pinning and un-pinning to get them perfect!) and tacked them in place, which is something I didn't do last time.

It's very hard to explain what I did differently this time, but last time I sewed the sleeves in place with the sewing machine, the top shoulder part bunched up. So I sewed up to it, stopped, and then re-positioned the machine past that area and carried on. I then came back to the area once the rest had been sewn and part machine sewed and part hand sewed it! I'm glad I did! It came out beautifully and I'm very proud of them! X3

4th March 2011: Sleeve progress These caused me alot of stress XD

First I needed to get the bottom correct, by which I mean the white "cuff" at the ends of the sleeves. I got a rough hem line for the white and then measured out 5cm (I deemed that about the right length for the cuff) and sewed the yellow down and then folded it over so that you couldn't see the stitching.

Then it was time for the Bondaweb DX This scared the crap out of me, I can tell you! I was shaking XD But it went smoothly but I did forget to check that the ends of the yellow clouds matched up DX Stupid!!! But in the end one sleeve was fine and the other only needed a tiny amount of un-picking and cutting.

Then came the appliqueing! It all went well apart from one hiccup where I had pulled on the thread and accidently bunched it up DX But it was only a small section and I re-sewed it ^^; It went slightly more "wavey" than my test peices, not sure why, but an iron will probably sort it out. If not, it'll be on my arm anyway and no one will notice 8D

Now to sew the sleeves up and get them back into the arm holes...

25th February 2011: Finally got there in the end... I had much more trouble with the appliqueing than I had expected! Before I sewed ANYTHING onto the sleeves (which I had gotten into the right places and marked out where they were attatched etc), I thought I had better check that I could successfully applique around the cloud shape. But I wasn't expecting the fabric to pucker so badly DX

After a few attempts and some help and advise, I brought some bondaweb and a embroidery needle (because my machine was shreading up the embroidery thread) which helped massively! Now the fabric doesn't pucker (or go "wavey") and it looks pretty good! ^^ Now I feel ready to go ahead and do the real thing 8D

10th February 2011: And here's the hard part! I finally got over myself and actually sewed the main jacket together XD I'm always terrified I'll have messed it up somehow when I actually come to sew it, but I haven't so it's all good! XD

So now is the hard part: The sleeves! DX Oh how I hate sleeves! And it'll be even more difficult this time because of the yellow parts!! I plan on cutting out the white part of the sleeve and then appliquing the yellow on top... but I will be doing that with the sleeve flat to make it easier. Which means I have to sort of where and how the sleeves fits into the jacket first, mark that out, then sort out where the yellow goes, applique it on, then finally... actually sew the sleeve onto the jacket with it hopefully in the right place I had marked out eariler DX

So much hassel DX

2nd February 2011: So, after much stress... ...we have finally gotten to this point XD I had alot of trouble working out how the design worked and had ALOT of advice in the process ^^; In the end, I decided to follow a similar design to that of Lloyd from Code Geass which I thought looked alot more sensible and workable!

And so the picture you see is the current result. I've also taken in a big dart in the middle of the back to make it more fitting. Now I have to make sure it is perfect and then sew it 8D

19th January 2011: Getting started I now finally have the time to get started on this!

I have taken the same pattern I used for my other Watanuki jacket and just made it longer 8D So far all of the panels have been cut out.

Athough I don't think there was any need to make the inside front panel as big as I did... I may not need much of it at all, if I plan on having a split at the side then the back part would be enough. I know what I mean, I'll have to see what it is like when I start pinning parts together 8D

24th November 2010: Applique testing So before I start anything with this cosplay, I first needed to test whether or not my sewing machine could do that nice applique stitching! Thankfully, it can. Not very big, but it can do it. I simply set my sewing machine to the zig-zag stitch and put it on the smallest stitch length. This is the result! I think it looks really nice :D