Sailor Senshi Uniform Tutorial -- Part 2
Unlike Part 1 of this tutorial. Part two is still in rough draft mode. I will revise and clarify this section when I have time.
Okay. So now were going to get into the harder parts of the costume. Like the hip roll, the cuffs, and the sleeves.
Hip roll thing:
This will sound crazy, but you’re going to need one of those under the door draft blocker things... Well just the foam. I found a kit at Wal-mart that had 2 of them in a box for like 14 bucks.
Anyway, there are 4 pieces of foam for each under door draft blocker (so there were 8 piece in the box) You’re going to take two of those and cut angles on the ends until they form the desired V-shape. I don’t know the exact degree of the angle, just shave away small angles until you get it to look right.
Then I glued the ends together with E6000 and smeared the glue out away from the joint to form kind of a overlap over the foam (just for a little extra support surface adhesion). A few long straight pins will hold the angle together as it dries. You can also throw a few stitches in there too.
Now, this V piece probably won’t be long enough to go around your hips, but using the same idea, just cut extra pieces and add those to the other ends until you have something that’ll wrap around your hips.
Now, you might thing you need to join the center back seam just as you did all the others, but my advice is don’t. Instead, my draft seal kit came with little plastic tubes used to join the pieces of foam. So use one of those. That way, the foam can separate and rejoin freely when you put on and take off your dress. The foam has no give and you don’t want your other joints to rip apart once the dress is done.
The next thing is to take a long strip of your fabric and cover the roll. It’s kind of like making piping. Just cover your foam and stitch close to the foam. And make sure to leave yourself about an inch or so of seam allowance.
You may want to stretch the fabric slightly as you sew to get a nice smooth cover.
When you get to the back just fold under your cut edges and slip stitch it closed.
I did all of this by hand, by the way. It was easier than trying to sew a casing and feeding in the foam. (the angle in the V made it really hard to do so)
Then I sewed the V onto the bodice (by hand) and after that, I sewed on the skirt/trunk combo. (also by hand)
Gloves:
If you really want to make your own gloves. More power to you. But I bought mine from eBay. They were 2 bucks a pair, (including shipping) So I bought like 3 pairs because I know how quickly white gloves get dirty.
They’re not the most amazing quality, but for 2 bucks, I’m not losing sleep over it.
Glove cuffs:
Okay, so for the stuffing, I used 5/8” foam backer rod insulation that I got a Lowe’s. I kind of just wrapped pieces around my forearm to get the right lengths. You can either cut them all the same length or you can cut them individually--making the top piece the largest and the next slightly smaller and the bottom the smallest so that the cuff would taper.
By the way. The backer rod and the door sealer foam doesn’t absorb moisture--meaning it won’t absorb sweat either, so you don’t have to worry about sweat stink soaking into your foam and living there for all eternity no matter how many times you dry clean.
You want to cut your fabric in a rectangle as long as your longest piece of foam plus about an 1”-1 ½”. For the width, just make sure it’s wide enough to wrap around all three pieces of foam and add another couple of inches.
I believe I did the first cuff by hand, and the second cuff by machine and you can’t really tell the difference. So basically fold your fabric in half and sew three channels for your foam. But don’t sew all the way across. Just the length of the foam. Then feed in your foam pieces.
You’ll need to connect the ends of your foam so you have rings. You can use glue or thread. I just used duct tape. So slide the fabric away from your foam ends. Connect them with glue, tape, or stitches. Then slide your fabric back over the connected ends.
Fold your raw unchanneled edge under and slip stitch closed. You’ll also need to stitch in the valleys of your rings.
After that just sew the top to your glove and you’re done.
Sleeves:
The sleeves are probably the MOST challenging part of this costume.
I used my 5/8” foam and cut a ring that fit my armscye (ps. Microsoft word spell check does not recognize “armscye” lol!) This whole ring will be the ring furthest from your armscye seam. The two rings above that aren’t actually full rings. You’ll have to trim them to fit later but you can cut them the same length.
Now take the top of your sleeve pattern piece from the Kwiksew pattern and cut it out just the top about 2-3 inches below the base of the armscye.
What I did was mark my seam allowance around the sleeve cap then kind of placed my three pieces of foam on the sleeve and marked where to sew my channels.
Just remember that your full ring will have to go just below the base of the armscye and will arc upwards. Your sleeve pieces will end up kind of horseshoe shaped almost.
Once you get everything marked, put the foam aside and sew the two sleeve pieces together along the bottom edge. Then turn it wrong sides together and sew around the sleeve cap.
Leave about two inches open at the top of the sleeve cap to insert your foam later. Repeat for the inner channels.
Insert your foam and once placed hand stitch your bottom channel shut. Repeat for the middle and top rings--remember you’ll have to trim and taper the foam to make it look good.
After it’s done, you can hand stitch the sleeve to the bodice.
Tiaras:
I bought my tiaras from Catzia’s Collectibles. They’re made of brass with a resin stone and they look lovely.
I opted for the smooth stone with the metal ring detail around the stone. I just like the look and the whole piece was like 25 bucks with shipping.
They also have a nice selection of all of the earrings and such.
The Brooch:
I made the brooch by painting the inside of half of a DIY Christmas ornament. After the paint dries, cut a circle of foam core or cardboard and glue that in there so you have a place to glue a barback pin.
Shoes:
Uranus’ boots. After much searching I found a pair of faux suede slouch ankle boots on eBay. To paint them I mixed regular acrylic paint with fabric medium which turns acrylic paint into fabric paint. I had to mix like 5 different colors and finishes to get the right shade of navy to match my skirt/collar.
Neptune’s heels: Basically the same as Uranus. I found a pair of fake leather pumps on eBay. Then I mixed 3 or 4 colors of paint until I had a color match and then painted them. I didn’t need to use the fabric medium cause I was painting plastic. But I did spray them with 4 - 5 coats of sealer so the paint wouldn’t chip.
Then the ribbons were made with leftover fabric and attached to the inside of the shoe with a little bit of sticky back Velcro.
Unfortunately, I haven't had to attempt to make the knee-high boots that some of the Sailors wear, But my suggestion is finding a pair of boots on eBay or Amazon and then painting them.
Well that should cover everything. I think. My goal is to come back and clean up this tutorial and add some pics, but I'll need to stage most of them because I didn't photograph as much as I should have.
Hope this helps and remember just give me a shout if you have any questions.
Jason
Okay. So now were going to get into the harder parts of the costume. Like the hip roll, the cuffs, and the sleeves.
Hip roll thing:
This will sound crazy, but you’re going to need one of those under the door draft blocker things... Well just the foam. I found a kit at Wal-mart that had 2 of them in a box for like 14 bucks.
Anyway, there are 4 pieces of foam for each under door draft blocker (so there were 8 piece in the box) You’re going to take two of those and cut angles on the ends until they form the desired V-shape. I don’t know the exact degree of the angle, just shave away small angles until you get it to look right.
Then I glued the ends together with E6000 and smeared the glue out away from the joint to form kind of a overlap over the foam (just for a little extra support surface adhesion). A few long straight pins will hold the angle together as it dries. You can also throw a few stitches in there too.
Now, this V piece probably won’t be long enough to go around your hips, but using the same idea, just cut extra pieces and add those to the other ends until you have something that’ll wrap around your hips.
Now, you might thing you need to join the center back seam just as you did all the others, but my advice is don’t. Instead, my draft seal kit came with little plastic tubes used to join the pieces of foam. So use one of those. That way, the foam can separate and rejoin freely when you put on and take off your dress. The foam has no give and you don’t want your other joints to rip apart once the dress is done.
The next thing is to take a long strip of your fabric and cover the roll. It’s kind of like making piping. Just cover your foam and stitch close to the foam. And make sure to leave yourself about an inch or so of seam allowance.
You may want to stretch the fabric slightly as you sew to get a nice smooth cover.
When you get to the back just fold under your cut edges and slip stitch it closed.
I did all of this by hand, by the way. It was easier than trying to sew a casing and feeding in the foam. (the angle in the V made it really hard to do so)
Then I sewed the V onto the bodice (by hand) and after that, I sewed on the skirt/trunk combo. (also by hand)
Gloves:
If you really want to make your own gloves. More power to you. But I bought mine from eBay. They were 2 bucks a pair, (including shipping) So I bought like 3 pairs because I know how quickly white gloves get dirty.
They’re not the most amazing quality, but for 2 bucks, I’m not losing sleep over it.
Glove cuffs:
Okay, so for the stuffing, I used 5/8” foam backer rod insulation that I got a Lowe’s. I kind of just wrapped pieces around my forearm to get the right lengths. You can either cut them all the same length or you can cut them individually--making the top piece the largest and the next slightly smaller and the bottom the smallest so that the cuff would taper.
By the way. The backer rod and the door sealer foam doesn’t absorb moisture--meaning it won’t absorb sweat either, so you don’t have to worry about sweat stink soaking into your foam and living there for all eternity no matter how many times you dry clean.
You want to cut your fabric in a rectangle as long as your longest piece of foam plus about an 1”-1 ½”. For the width, just make sure it’s wide enough to wrap around all three pieces of foam and add another couple of inches.
I believe I did the first cuff by hand, and the second cuff by machine and you can’t really tell the difference. So basically fold your fabric in half and sew three channels for your foam. But don’t sew all the way across. Just the length of the foam. Then feed in your foam pieces.
You’ll need to connect the ends of your foam so you have rings. You can use glue or thread. I just used duct tape. So slide the fabric away from your foam ends. Connect them with glue, tape, or stitches. Then slide your fabric back over the connected ends.
Fold your raw unchanneled edge under and slip stitch closed. You’ll also need to stitch in the valleys of your rings.
After that just sew the top to your glove and you’re done.
Sleeves:
The sleeves are probably the MOST challenging part of this costume.
I used my 5/8” foam and cut a ring that fit my armscye (ps. Microsoft word spell check does not recognize “armscye” lol!) This whole ring will be the ring furthest from your armscye seam. The two rings above that aren’t actually full rings. You’ll have to trim them to fit later but you can cut them the same length.
Now take the top of your sleeve pattern piece from the Kwiksew pattern and cut it out just the top about 2-3 inches below the base of the armscye.
What I did was mark my seam allowance around the sleeve cap then kind of placed my three pieces of foam on the sleeve and marked where to sew my channels.
Just remember that your full ring will have to go just below the base of the armscye and will arc upwards. Your sleeve pieces will end up kind of horseshoe shaped almost.
Once you get everything marked, put the foam aside and sew the two sleeve pieces together along the bottom edge. Then turn it wrong sides together and sew around the sleeve cap.
Leave about two inches open at the top of the sleeve cap to insert your foam later. Repeat for the inner channels.
Insert your foam and once placed hand stitch your bottom channel shut. Repeat for the middle and top rings--remember you’ll have to trim and taper the foam to make it look good.
After it’s done, you can hand stitch the sleeve to the bodice.
Tiaras:
I bought my tiaras from Catzia’s Collectibles. They’re made of brass with a resin stone and they look lovely.
I opted for the smooth stone with the metal ring detail around the stone. I just like the look and the whole piece was like 25 bucks with shipping.
They also have a nice selection of all of the earrings and such.
The Brooch:
I made the brooch by painting the inside of half of a DIY Christmas ornament. After the paint dries, cut a circle of foam core or cardboard and glue that in there so you have a place to glue a barback pin.
Shoes:
Uranus’ boots. After much searching I found a pair of faux suede slouch ankle boots on eBay. To paint them I mixed regular acrylic paint with fabric medium which turns acrylic paint into fabric paint. I had to mix like 5 different colors and finishes to get the right shade of navy to match my skirt/collar.
Neptune’s heels: Basically the same as Uranus. I found a pair of fake leather pumps on eBay. Then I mixed 3 or 4 colors of paint until I had a color match and then painted them. I didn’t need to use the fabric medium cause I was painting plastic. But I did spray them with 4 - 5 coats of sealer so the paint wouldn’t chip.
Then the ribbons were made with leftover fabric and attached to the inside of the shoe with a little bit of sticky back Velcro.
Unfortunately, I haven't had to attempt to make the knee-high boots that some of the Sailors wear, But my suggestion is finding a pair of boots on eBay or Amazon and then painting them.
Well that should cover everything. I think. My goal is to come back and clean up this tutorial and add some pics, but I'll need to stage most of them because I didn't photograph as much as I should have.
Hope this helps and remember just give me a shout if you have any questions.
Jason
I imagine that using the foam for the hip roll is much more comfortable than the thick cord they sell in the drapery department at Hancock Fabrics.
ReplyDeleteIt's also much lighter!
ReplyDeleteHow much fabric did you use for the bow, skirt, and other details of that one solid color?
ReplyDeleteHey Shawntay!
ReplyDeleteI had to buy in 1 yd increments when buying online... so I bought 3 yards of the main colors (navy for Uranus and dk. jade for Neptune) and then 1 yard of the accent color. (sun gold for Uranus and teal for Neptune.
Really, you need about 2 2/3 yd for the skirts and collars and about 1/2 yard for each bow.
Great information, thanks so much for sharing! :) I'm not familiar with the double circle skirt technique however. Off to Google I go! :)
ReplyDeleteHey Sonia, if you're familiar with how to cut a basic circle skirt, then all you have to do is cut out two circles... just remember that instead of using your full waist measurement for the inside cut, use half of it, because each circle becomes half of the skirt... I'll try to update the tutorial to explain that a little better.
ReplyDelete