Magic Knight Rayearth holds a very special place in my heart because it's the very first anime that I watched with my two best friends, Sara (Hikaru) and J'aimie (Umi), way back when we were all in middle school. Of course we all gravitated towards one of the three characters, and I chose Fuu. I liked her the best because she was the smart one and she had glasses (just like me!), but also because she seemed so much sweeter and more polite than the other two, and that's very much the kind of person I am. The fact that I love the color green didn't hurt either.
The majority of this costume was made in about 1 week. All of the patterns were drafted by hand and all of the fabric came from the Casa collection. All together these costumes ate up over 60 yards of fabric because we really wanted to generate the effect of the original reference pictures. However, this made these costumes really tedious to wear in the convention center. While I love the look of these costumes in pictures, I would never again make a costume with this much extra fabric.
Cape: Made out of "Grass Green" Casa crepe, it's 9 feet long and 9.5 feet wide at the bottom hem. It's made up of two kind-of triangular pieces of fabric that were overlocked together in the middle. I didn't want to line the cape because I wanted it to have as much "billowiness" as it could. All of the other edges are double fold hems. The hood came out nicely, but I wish I had drafted the pattern to be a bit bigger. The cape was connected to my top with four snaps underneath my chest plate.
Top: Made out of "Ivory" Casa satin, it's basically a big rectangle with elastic at the top to keep it up.
Overskirt: Made out of "Ivory" Casa satin, it's somewhere between 5 feet and 6 feet long. It was originally longer, but I cut it down because I felt that weight of the fabric made it drag too much and it didn't hang right. It attaches at my waist with 2 snaps. I decided not to make the top & overskirt one piece because I really wanted the overskirt to be as wide as possible so that I could gather it really nicely. Figuring out the final shape was, for some unknown reason, ridiculously difficult for me, but I'm pleased with the finished look.
Skirt: Made out of "Grass Green" Casa crepe, it's just two circle skirts, one 16" and one 14", that are attached to an elasticized waistband. Like the cape, it is unlined so as not to ruin the flow of the fabric, so all the hems are double folded and all of the seams are overlocked.
Waist band: Made out of "Grass Green" Casa crepe, it's a big rectangle that I gathered with elastic on each of the ends and then used velcro to secure it. In some pictures it looks smaller than I would have liked, probably because it kept scrunching up while I was wearing it because my waist is much smaller than my hips and ribcage.
Arm bands & Leg Bands: Made out of "Grass Green" Casa crepe, these are also big rectangles that I measured to be twice the length I wanted them to be so that I could scrunch them up while wearing them to get the look that they have in the reference picture.
Boots: Purchased white boots on ebay, cut the back of them down so that the front had a bit of a point, glued gold bias tape around the top, glued on a resin gem, and then painted the detail around the gems.
Chest Plate: Made out of 3 pieces of yellow craftfoam, smoothed out the edges with spackling paste, and spray painted the whole thing gold. The gem in the middle is 1/2 of a plastic keepsake ornament that was colored with semi-translucent hobby paint. It attaches to my top with 2 snaps and a piece of velcro.
Arm band: Made out of a glow bracelet (that was no longer glowing) that was painted with the same hobby paint and glued to a piece of craftfoam that was spray painted gold.
Headband: The base of this is actually one of those "choker" necklaces with the two balls on the ends. The gem is cast from resin and painted with hobby paint, then two plastic pearls were threaded onto the necklace and glued to the gem.
Wig: This was my first time styling a wig completely on my own. I trimmed the length of the wig to give it a blunt edge and eliminate the original layered effect. I then rolled the wig in curlers and tried to curl it using hot water. This failed epically. So I went out and bought some Got2B styling glue and slathered the wig fiber in that and then rolled it into about 8-10 different curls. Once the glue was dry, I extracted the rollers and began using tiny amounts of glue to join all of the separate curls together. The finished product is very solid and possibly bullet proof.
Awards: 2nd Place Master's Craftsmanship ~ Anime Boston 2011, 1st Place Master's Presentation ~ Anime Boston 2011
