Skip to main content

Costume Project: Wisteria Fox Day 4.5

 The extra yard of fabric is on the way! It's coming via USPS so might be a while so in the meantime I'm assessing what I have for other parts of the project. 

Paint and Fabric Paint

One of the major things I am doing for this project is hand painting wisteria vines throughout the kimono. I will also include blue flames (foxfire) as part of the sleeves and lower edges. 

Checking my box of paints I was happy to find that I had paint meant for fabric in a shade of purple! Miraculous! Who put that there? I also have acrylic paints in red, blue, and white so I can mix different shades of purple and pink. I also had a couple shades of green. I also found my Liquitex Fabric Medium so I can use all my acrylic paints. (Except the metallic ones apparently.  Luckily, not planning on using metallic paints. I don't think.)

For the blue flames, I was thinking of painting it on too and luckily I found my Turquoise Fabric Spray paint that I used for Princess Zelda's apron.  

I do like the slightly cloudy effect for the flame motif. I don't want them to be too prominent. 

Fabric Painting Methods


The plan is for the flame motif to create a stenciled effect out of painter's tape, cardstock, and wrapping paper. These will go along the bottom edges of the robe and sleeves. For the sleeves, I can get away with using my painter's tent to spray the paint on. The robe is not likely going to fit in the tent so I may have to use my old shower curtain and set it up on the railing of my porch outside. That will be weather-dependent. 

I learned from the Zelda apron that laying the fabric on the ground and spraying from above results in paint drop spots. So I need to be able to hang these pieces vertically. Or at least at a 45-degree angle. 

For the wisteria vines, I may create a couple templates, use some transfer tracing paper, plot down where I want the major flower clumps to be, and plan out the flow. There will likely also be some free-handing to this as well. 

Order of Operations

When I do each paint job will need to happen at specific junctures of construction. Making this a little complicated. 
  1. Cut out all fabric pieces. 
  2. Dye Fabric purple - darker at the bottom and fading up to white. 
  3. Sew the outer robe. This will give me armholes to hang with. 
  4. Spray Paint blue flames
  5. Paint parts of the fox applique (nose, eyes)
  6. Iron on the fox applique to the front of both outer sleeves. (Labeling pattern pieces will be very key to this.)
  7. Sew edges of applique if necessary. 
  8. Pin Sleeves to kimono body. 
  9. Start painting flowers. 
  10. Sew the lining and attach the sleeves to the kimono. 
So there's no actual progress today except finding my hidden supplies and thinking about this stuff. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Costume Design: Guiding Principles

Part of designing costumes is finding a way to pick from many solutions. Limiting these choices can be the art of design.  I have some of my own "Guiding Principles" or Design Principles when it comes to costume design. Some of these constraints are based on non-mutable factors. (Or currently difficult to change.) The fun ones are a bit on the arbitrary side. These are self-imposed limitations for the costume that as a designer I decide to apply to any given costume.  The point of these principles is to help you make a final decision if you are paralyzed by many choices. I may get hung up on some pretty silly things, so at the very least, this helps me move forward and kind of imply that I had a plan all along.  Immutable Design Principles We might run into some touchy subjects here but whatever, here we go! Immutable principles are either constraints your life situation has you in at any given time or core beliefs about what you wear. This can mean things like religious beli
Post a Comment
Read more

Costume Fabric Cheat Sheet: How to Pick Fabric for your Costume

 In the previous post , I laid out how to describe different aspects of fabric when trying to find a good fabric for your costume. This post will go over ways to apply those terms and actually pick out a fabric for your costume. I will attempt to teach by examples.  4 Avenues of Research Cheat! I mean...look at other cosplays. You can often find images of photoshoots which make for better references than illustrations. If you are lucky, the costume maker may have posted a journal about how they made their costume or at least list the materials they used.  Check for Suggestions in Sewing Patterns Sewing patterns will list suggested fabrics to use for the costume. Pop those terms into a search engine and see the results.  Historical, Cultural, or Real Life Examples With a search engine or books, you can find out about how clothes were made back in the day or what materials are used around the world. You can also check the tags on your clothes to see what it's made of.  Narrow down to
Post a Comment
Read more

Hakama Series - Hibakama (Scarlet Hakama)

The bright red hakama with a white kimono is a common sight in both anime and video game characters. Shrine maidens or Miko also wear this combination of colors when they work at Shinto shrines. Honestly, there is a LOT of history and cultural significance wrapped up in this one.  Anime/Games: Inuyasha, Genshin Impact, Sailor Moon,  So let's talk Design. Design Considerations Cultural Significance This is one I'd pay attention to if I was creating a character of my own. I assume that already created characters have had this research done and have taken their artistic license.  Some of the research taught me a few things: The color is technically scarlet or vermillion, not "red". 🤷 Miko are not part of the Shinto clergy. Sometimes they are just seasonal workers.  Generally, Miko are young women in their teens or early 20s. After a certain age, they wear different colors.  This was based on Heian nobility colors and fashions.  Color Like I said earlier, the color is ve
Post a Comment
Read more