Crystal Mommy - part 1

 Hi everyone! :3

I know I started one Final Fantasy XIV -cosplay earlier, but I'm having a little trouble with it (mainly fabrics at this point, don't worry, I'll figure it out). So because Y'shtola is too much right now, I want to focus on something "easier". This would be Venat from the same game! ^^ I have a bunch of characters I want to cosplay from it, so you can probably expect more to come. Honestly there's so much I could say about Venat, but I think it all would be spoilers, so I'm just going keep all my feels in my heart and get this out.

The hero who did nothing wrong

For this project I bought patterns from Etsy and wig is also a character wig from Miccostumes, so there isn't too much brain work needed this time! >:3 The only ones I had to figure out myself were Venat's sword and mask.. And makeup of course. Right now I want to show you how my sewing went.

Concept art of Venat

First the patterns, which I bought from EmUnArum's shop. I didn't follow the pattern exactly, since the fit was too snug and hem was too long, but it was easy to scale up and cut some off from the hem. I also got a heads up about the sizing in the products description and reviews, so this didn't come as a surprise either. Overall the patterns were good, but because english isn't my first language and I know close to nothing about sewing, the instructions were a quite difficult to understand. I think I did an ok job though without written instructions.

Look what I made! A mess! :D

The fabric was a huge headache! The color varied from white to grey to light blue or lilac depending on the reference. My local fabric store didn't have anything, so I had to drive for and hour to Eurokangas in Oulu. There I found THE fabric. Light blue-ish grey that would've been perfect! It was beautiful.. until I looked at the price tag and went "Nope!". I needed about 6-7 meters of fabric and the cost was 39€/meter. That was too much for my budget and yes I was sad, but I found a budget friendly option with some texture, so that was nice. :) I can live with this choice. 

It's light grey!

Sewing the robe was pretty straight-forward, the most time consuming part being the detail panels. Why? Embroidery of course! Drawing and scaling the design to the panel plus the embroidery itself... I probably spent most of my time doing that instead of any other part of the costume.

Here's the design! this will be on two panels mirrored.

Some progress, this took me forever! Also ironed some interfacing to the panels~

Finished!

I know my embroidery needs a lot of work. I'm just happy I managed to get it done. 

With sewing there isn't much to say. I modified the patterns a little (aka made it shorter and wider lol). For closing I used invisible zipper, also tried to do french seams and actually enjoyed sewing for once.

First test.

Rare seam shot! I'm just so happy how my french seam turned out :3

Taken from my Insta story btw ^^

Testing the "cape", obviously not pressed yet.

The hood is huge!

I did my very damn best to make the result as clean as possible. Sewing is definitely not my strong point, but damn have I learned a lot. This time it was much more enjoyable too (probably because pattern modifying was such a breeze). Here's the finished robe!

Ta-dah!

As happy as I am, we are not quite done here yet. Because that robe is open a little from the bottom, I need something! So I made a skirt. A very simple rectangle with rubber band.

Yeah, I don't have any progress photos, but this thing isn't rocket science.

Now that the skirt is done, the robe has all it's panels, cape and hood, everything is hemmed and finished, here's the critically acclaimed mmorpg final fantasy xiv result.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! It's done! :3

The back~

That was all the sewing for now. I'm so proud of myself! I love this cosplay already so much and I'm not ashamed to show my seams either! Next ones would be the mask, other accessories and wig styling. See you next time! :3