Cosplay Update: Kikyo and Utena Construction

For Wondercon in April, I finished two new cosplays--Kikyo from Inuyasha, and Utena from Revolutionary Girl Utena! I had a ton of fun with both of them, and learned so much from making all the various accessory pieces for Utena. Follow the cut for more pictures and details.

Kikyo was a basic kimono with split hakama. This was my first time making split hakama, and I used this tutorial for it. I figured a few things out with it that I will be able to apply when I make another pair for Assassin in a few weeks. I shortened the kimono to make it easier to wear with the hakama--it goes to mid-thigh on me. It's fully lined.

For the sleeve lacing, I added buttonholes through the sleeve and lining, and threaded it with matching bias tape. The sleeve openings were a little tricky, but because the kimono is fully lined, I was able to get it to work for maximum character accuracy!

Both the kimono and hakama are made out of poly-cotton twill. I loved the weight of the twill for the hakama, but in the future I'll make kimono out of lighter fabric. The drape of the twill is lovely, but with all the layering it gets a bit cumbersome.

Photograph by Fat Man Photography at Wondercon 2015

The wig is Arda's "Venus" in Black. I didn't need to cut this one, thankfully, just styled the bangs and ponytail. The sandals are made from a flip-flop sole and braided jute twine, and the socks are traditional white fabric tabi that I happened to have lying around.

For Utena, I wanted to make sure that I would be able to do her regular school uniform as well as the Duelist version, so all of the "accessories" are detachable! The jacket is made from my favorite poly-cotton twill, with red bias tape edging. The white underskirt and pockets are also twill.

The shorts are leggings from Forever21 that I cut down to the right length (couldn't beat the $3.00 price tag!). The amazingly gorgeous ring is from RoseCrestCosplay: it's 3D printed!

Here you can see some of my progress pictures! The top left is the initial jacket pattern pieces, and the top right is the painting of the shoulder pads. I made them out of a large plastic Christmas ornament that I cut down to size and filled with expanding foam before painting. The outer gold edge is flexible PVC pipe.

The "fringe" is rolled fabric with the edges serged and then stuffed with polyfill. They were sewn to the felt backing. The felt backing was then glued to the epaulettes with E6000, and pinbacks were sewn to the felt.

For the shoes, I found white shoes on Ebay that were the right shape and style, and then painted the black portions on with matte floral spray. Floral spray was recommended to me by a friend, and I would highly suggest it for shoes--it doesn't crack like regular spray paint!

The Duelist brooch portion is from StarlitCreations--I didn't trust myself to mold a nice one, so I got a resin cast one from the artist, and painted it to match all of the other gold pieces. I did cast the green brooch and the gold triangles myself!

For the sword, I started with a Nerf rapier as the base, and added pieces made from Model Magic. Once it was completely dry, I sealed it with Mod Podge and then painted it. The black part is craft foam with puff paint and a sponge finish. I'm not that great with props, but I'm slowly learning, so I was pretty pleased with how it turned out given my low skill level.

Photo by chibi_chrno at Wondercon 2015

The wig is Arda's "Venus" again, in Light Pink, which I cut and styled it myself. The socks are from Amazon. I'm really excited about how everything for Utena turned out, and can't wait to wear it again at Anime Expo!

Thanks for sticking with this long post, and I hope that my picture spam will help other cosplayers working on the same characters in the future~