Making of: Shiina Mashiro

Shiina have always been one of my most favourite characters ever, so it's understandable that I wanted to make a cosplay for her. Her character was just made for me, it's like someone made an anime version of me. xD There I will try to describe how did I make this cosplay.

So as always, first of all I had to make a research and find as much refference picture of her as possible. She have two school outfits. One is with jacket, sweater, long sleeve shirt with tie and pleated skirt. The second one is pretty much the same, only without the jacket and the shirt has short sleeves.

Then I searched for materials. I bought these materials:
Blue rongo for jacket.
Crepe satin for tie.
White poplin for shirt.
White poplin for second shirt
Pink cotton for skirt.
Pattern  for jacket.
Black knit bias tape.
Then I bought non elastic bias tape, interfacing and lining for the jacket in local store.

Then I bought some other things for this cosplay:
Wig
Sweater in white
School bag
White high socks
Brown shoes

Before I start I want to say, this cosplay was full of my first times!!! Everything I had to make for it I was doing for first time ( yea, everything - shirt, jacket, tie and even pleated skirt) so please, I know it has a lot of mistakes and I hopefully won't repeat them in my next cosplays. :) But I'm happy with it anyway! ^-^

The wig I bought was from RoleCosplay (wig-supplier / L-Email is the same). It's supposed be for Umaru but I used it for Shiina, because it has perfect colour for her I couldn't find anywhere else - a little orange light blond. I made a video review for this wig so if you're interested, you can check it out for more informations. :)

I've started with the skirt. To be honest, this was my first pleated skirt I've ever made, but luckily, it's really easy to do. :D Thanks to refference pictures I could say Shiina's skirt is made of 8 both side pleats. So I made a pattern for my measurements on PC. Because my fabric was cotton and cotton shrinks after it's washed, I washed it before I started woking with it. 

I made the pattern a bit longer, because I was scared of the skirt being too short. You can shorten it anytime you want but contrariwise... it's harder. :D Now I just traced it on my fabric and cut it out. Then I sewed bias tape on the bottom edge and then I embroidered black line about  1,5cm above the bias tape.

After that I just made pleats and ironned them. Then I pinned the skirt, tried it on and shorten it as I needed. I sewed strip to the upper edge and invisible zipper under one of the side pleats. And the skirt was done! Yay! 

Next one was the jacket. Since jacket is quite hard to sew and this is the first one I've ever made, it's not perfect... at all, but at the time I was making it I was really proud of it. :3 :D I wasn't confident with constructing my own pattern with darts at all , so I bought one from Burda that was exacly what I wanted.

Then I made shirt. To be honest, this was really challenging for me and I regreted I rather didn't buy it while I was making it. xD But in the end I was happy with it. :3 For this I made my own pattern. It took me a while to make it right. xD But thanks to Aomori I atleast knew the intructions. :D

After several days making pattern, I finally victorously traced it on my fabric and I thought it will be easy as hell from now. Well, not really. :D And I had to make two! One with short sleeves and one with long sleeves. QwQ

The tie now... well, I just borrowed one from my brother and traced it over on my fabric. xD

Since I couldn't find good material for sweater in our country, I just bought one in white and dyed it with iDye Poly to pastel blue. I searched everywhere, the sweaters are made in every single colour - yellow, purple, green... only not blue. -.- Then I sewed my bias tape around the neck part and again embroidered a black line around it this time with elastic thread so the neck part stay stretchy.

And the sweater was done and with it the whole costume! What do you say about it? :3 I really loved this cosplay, because Shiina was one of my most favourite characters ever. I really enjoyed roleplaying her and wearing this confy cosplay at cons. :3