Yamatonokami Yasusada - Touken Ranbu

Kimono

The blue-green outer kimono started life as a vintage women's iromuji I bought from Ichiroya. I took about half the seams out and resewed it into a men's cut (by hand, so as not to affect the drape too badly). I made a navy blue cotton juban to go with it, but I ended up picking up a vintage men's juban from Tangerine Mountain, which had a patterned body, but a nice stiff navy blue collar, which keeps everything together much more nicely than the one I made.

Hakama + Accessories

All store-bought, because life is too short to make hakama from scratch when you can buy exactly what you need on Rakuten. The geta, tabi, and obi were bought various places while I was travelling in Japan a few summers ago.

Armor

The chest armor is built out of EVA foam, which I primed and painted. It turns out Rusoleum primer is garbage, though, and is flaking already, so it needs a repaint. The bracers are wet-molded sheepskin I dyed and did the gold crest on with Rub'N'Buff.

Haori

The most ambitious part of this project, by far. I decided to try traditional Japanese rice-flour resists and indigo dyeing, on the same project. The book Japanese Stencil Dyeing is a fantastic resource, and I wish there was more stuff like it out there. I wound up with problems with the resist coming off on areas it wasn't supposed to be on, and not having a large enough bucket, so the dye job isn't nearly as even as I would like, but working with indigo dye is very nearly magic, I think.