Anise Tatlin - Tales of the Abyss
Andy
Made In: 2016
Status: active
Notes
This is very much not my usual type of costume. I usually stay away from overly 'cute' designs. I very rarely even cosplay women. And I've never actually played the game, although I did watch the anime back when it was new. But I'm easily persuaded, and even though it's really outside my normal rage, I really like how it turned out. And everyone loves Tokunaga, of course.
Components
Dress
The base of this dress is a plain dress block. I did virtually nothing to it, other than altering the hemline. In fact, I didn't even bother to take out the shoulder darts, because they're covered completely by the cape. And frankly, I'm glad I didn't spend too much time drafting it, because all of that edging took a lot of time. That was completed using several tutorials, but the basic method was to make a separate trim pattern using the dress pattern, and essentially making some very elaborate and specific bias tape. The sleeves are just tubes with cuffs attached, and only connect to the dress via some strips of fabric under the arm. The pink fabric was leftovers from someone else's project, and the white is cotton twill.
Cape
The cape is completely drafted from scratch, and made of cotton twill, with a very heavy interfacing in the collar to make it stand up all on its own. The trim is more custom bias tape, and the designs on the front and the back were done by blowing up reference images to the correct size, tracing it onto the cape and then very carefully hand painting it all. I was originally going to applique it, but that way lies madness. Thankfully, Jacquard just happens to make a fabric paint that matched my trim exactly.
Tokunaga
This was the best part of the project. I've made stuffed animals before, but it had been a long time, and it was nice to build something more 3D after years and years of mostly just sewing clothing. His pattern is completely custom. I basically just played around with shapes until I was happy with it, and then finalized the design. The button eyes were hand painted, and the 'stitching' is black embroidery floss. He's made out of fleece, which means he's great for hugging.
Shoes
Anise's shoes are stupid. I managed to find a really cheap pair of shoes on Amazon, and then proceeded to make them look very dumb by painting them half black with leather paints and cutting a bunch of pieces off. I'm not a fan of custom footwear for cosplay, but nothing else was going to work.
Socks
The cuffs to the socks were made from the same fabric as the shirt cuffs, attached to over the knee socks bought from Sock Dreams.
