some earring posts and away I went! I love these earrings and so far they've held up really well.
Hair: I lack the long-at-front-short-at-back style that Xianghua has, but I did my best to emulate that style. I cut my bangs specifically for Anime North (Isshi and Xianghua had bangs), parted them as Xianghua does, and left two long pieces of hair in front of my ears and the headband. The rest was pulled into a tight bun at the back of my head. For the photoshoot, I was in a rush, so my hair style wasn't as accurate and I used a hairclip to keep the ends of my hair tucked behind my head.
Top: I used a tanktop to help me draw the pattern and then made measurements to see how far down the front flap should hang. This is actually a fake cheongsam opening at the front because I thought it would be easier to make it tight-fitting if I made the top as a tube top. There's a hook-and-eye closure at the neck so I can get it on and off. This top is very comfortable and, if I had more self-confidence, I'd wear it normally during the summer. The gold edging at thet op and around the false opening is metallic gold elastic and I faked the frogs as well using this same elastic. The pattern at the top was created baesd off of many screenshots. The pink flower and gold swirls were traced out with the help of scaled-up printouts from the actual game. It took me many hours to paint all of this, especially the purple design at the top, since a lot of it was painted on with a toothpick. The Cantonese characters at the bottom were made with guidance from my mother, though I was too nervous about screwing up and therefore ignored stroke order in favour of being way too geometric. *sniff* The back of the shirt also features gold fabric-painted designs that are also as close as I could figure out from the game screenshots. I think the back designs turned out the best, out of the whole costume.
Sleeves: The most complicated part of the costume sewing-wise because of all the layers/fabrics involved. The bottom layer is the red-purple that the over-shorts are made out of while the middle is the same white as the top and the upper layer is made out of the same blue-purple as the under-shorts. This upper layer is encased in a strip of gold ribbon over which a black layer is placed, with a gold detail as per the in-game screenshots. The gold detail on the white part is a miniature version of the side detail on the over-shorts. There's a half-circle opening in the very bottom of the sleeves and the very bottom edge is a fabric-painted border of solid gold. The geometric pattern of inter-twined square spirals was drawn on in tailor's chalk and then painted in orange. The upper edge of the red-purple part is another gold border, but this time it's a series of circles like a string of pearls. The sleeves kept falling down, unfortunately, as the carpet tape I used really didn't work very well.
Over-shorts: The first time I'd ever made pants OR shorts. I took apart an old pair of my cousin's swim trunks to use as a pattern. Xianghua's over-shorts are looser than the other pair of shorts, but I ended up making these too loose. I was rather unhappy also because this meant the elastic bunched up the shorts at the top. This was the first part of the costume to be finished. I used a more grainy gold fabric paint for all the painting on the shorts. There's a slit in the side of the shorts on the outside. The other reason they're loose is because I was too afraid of them being too tight.
Under-shorts: These aren't full shorts as I was cutting corners a little bit (I didn't want to wear TWO pairs of shorts and this fabric HATED my sewing machine and clogged up the machine a lot, even just sewing the upper sleeves and these two knee-covers.) There's a thin gold border around the lower edge, in the same grainey-gold fabric paint as the upper shorts.
Sash and Holders: The sash was made out of the same white fabric as the top (I love this fabric and I'd kill to find out exactly what it was; it was in a sale bin and was "fibres unknown" at Walmart. Sigh.) The design on the sash consist of a flower similar to the pink one on the front of the top, plus parts from the over-short design. It's also got a fringe-like border in gold fabric paint on the front and back at both ends of the sash and is bordered by white bias tape to try and give it a cleaner edge. The sash is held on by strips of blue lycra with gold tips.
Ankle Ties: Strips of purple lycra (same as the headpiece) with the ends painted orange.
Slippers: Dark blue slippers bought at Walmart and painted with dark purple fabric paint. The patterns on the back and side are similar to those on the black part of the sleeves. Gold bows are hard to see in the pictures, but at near the front of the slippers and all other details are in orange fabric paint.
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