The Bliss of Clover

Oruha (織葉) - Clover (クローバー)
A CLAMP manga

Created for the Animeland Wasabi 2013 Costume Contest, with ~decemberwynn as my partner, Suu. We won the pick for Best Pair as well as Third Place in the Master's division. Both of us made our own costumes.

Photo by the wonderful =Torremitsu

Craftsmanship:

Dress: Mostly made of a white bridal satin, with a few other things thrown in. The most difficult part was the bodice, which I had to fit quite a few times with the help of my friend Elise. It contains lots of boning in each seam, under silver casing, with interfacing and grommets in the back to lace it up over my corset. The bodice has a satin train attached, as well as a detachable lace train that ties/hooks on in the front. Underneath is a skirt, which is pleated and has a gauzy silver lining in the front. I tried to make the gloves out of satin too, but I just couldn't get it to work. So in the end, I had to get a white stretch knit and only do satin for the pointy top part, which is held up with more interfacing and has a lace/pearl trim where the two parts come together.

Wig: Was mostly hand curled by my dearest roommate ~flyingmerpig, while I was taking in her costumes haha. Lots and lots of crunchy hairspray went into holding the top in place. The pearls are threaded and attached to the wig cap with black wire so I can take them off when I do other versions of Oruha.

Microphone: The base is a wooden dowel and a piece of sheet metal folded into the popsicle shape on top for the body. I covered the sheet metal with sculpey and baked it, but I didn't like the look so I ended up making it a microphone cozy out of gold fabric. The details on the front are mostly painted sheet protectors, with a gear charm and a little silver sculpey circle. The metal frame is more sheet metal that I bolted to the body, and the love detail on top is sculpey that is bolted to the metal. The feathers are more sheet protector bits that I painted and attached to wire which is bolted into the body. The cord is speaker wire that is bolted to the wooden dowel.

Wings: 7.5 feet wide, 11 feet when extended, these guys were a real handful. At least I made them so that they are easily detachable and even come apart to fit in my car! The wings are attached by a method I saw in a tutorial online, which worked fairly well but I had to modify a little bit. The base is a flag bracket that is bolted to sheet metal (with a mousepad glued to it for comfort), which I wear under a very tightly laced corset. The bracket sticks out and attaches to PVC pipe in a T shape, which is in turn bolted to the wooden frame parts of each individual wing. The nice thing about the flag bracket method is that most of the weight of the wings goes around my waist and on my hips, instead of on my shoulders like a regular harness would. Unfortunately, the wings ended up tilting back and I had to give them shoulder straps anyway (though I made them as unnoticible as possible since the dress is supposed to be strapless and they weren't really carrying any weight themselves). The wooden frame has a facade glued to the front, so you can't really see its shape, but I used wood that is a 90 degree angle and is meant to go on the corners of walls, which helped brace it against itself when cut at an angle. It also has additional braces at the joints so the wood doesn't crack. The feathers are all cut from foamboard so they are fairly light, and the edges are sanded and sealed with modge podge. They are attached to the wood frames by metal posts, which allows them to swing freely. The frame has three pulleys inside it, and a cord which runs from the bottom of the base up to the top feathers. The feathers are all connected to each other by fishing line. Thus, when I pull on the cord, the feathers raise up. Yay movable wings!