As you can tell from my pictures about the straps, I'm basing all this on that bra. BUT I want the top to be bigger than the bra, so I had to draft out how I wanted it to look. I put the bra on me, for starters, and took a look at where my curves are--waist, and such. In most of the pictures available Haruhi has the world's LONGEST TORSO EVER and, well, I don't.
I do, however, have a lovely hourglass figure and I want to use it to the max.
As such, I wanted the end of the top(ruffle bottom included) so stop high enough above the smallest point of my waist that the difference would be visible. Reference pictures seem to put the top just at her waist, or at least where it would be on me--but that makes me look stumpier than I need to. *
*a point of philosophy, if you will: One of the rules I have in cosplay is that I will modify the proportion of a costume in order to better suit my body. I think this gives a more purposeful, realistic feel than if I tried to be 100% accurate. On your own costumes, you make the call.
One of the things to note also is that by making the top shorter than the reference pictures, I had to change the number of criss-crosses in the front of Haruhi's top to avoid having the area look scrunched. I'm doing 2 crosses instead of three.
So, in the mirror I gave a good hard look at my bits and pieces and came up with about where I wanted the top to end. Then I put the bra back on my dress-form and took bits of muslin and pinned them all around where the top would be. I then cut away the exess muslin and drew in where I wanted to put seams on the top. The result looks like this:
The result is a bit hap-hazard, but not bad for my first attempt, eh? If you don't have a dress form you can get someone else to pin & draw, just be careful not to stab or be stabbed. You want to get a close but not TOO close fit--this is to get an estimate, and you need to be able to breathe. You should probably use one long piece of fabric for this rather than bits of pieces, but either way it works out.
After cutting the muslin down to size & drawing on the seams, I un-pinned the fabric and cut along the seams to make separate pieces of fabric to start my pattern.
As you can see, it's all rough right there. I labels the pieces to helop tell them apart--(Right Center Back, Right Back, Right Front, Right Center)
You only really need 1 set of the pattern, it's not like your right and left side are all that radically different from each other. AND it helps prevent wobbly boobage, which is not the goal.
Then I did some MATH.
I looked at the pieces and measured out (to the nearest .25", anyway) how big each piece was. Then I added .5" to all sides to account for seam allowance. Usually you do 3/8" for seam allowance, but who wants to measure that out? Bleh. So I get 1/2".
I then got a DIFFERENT piece of muslin and cut out the pattern AGAIN. Isn't this fun? It looks like this:
href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/37157244@N03/4418676882/" title=" by raiphin, on Flickr">
Lovely. I sewed those pieces together to make both sides of the top (but am not sewing it together in the back. I want to use the bra clasp for security & a zipper or snaps or something over the top of that.) I then pinned the result to the dress form.
And that's when I noticed 2 things.
1) part of the front is sewn the wrong way. Make sure you know, really KNOW which side you're working on, because they look very, very similar if you're not careful.
2) Gap-age. There are gaps. Why are there gaps?
Ah, that'd be the hourglass figure I mentioned. Unfortunately--where sewing is concerned--I am not shaped like a tube. It would be a whole lot easier if I were, but there it is.
So. Now what? Now it gets interesting.
What I did was veeery careful put the whole concoction back on myself, and stare at the mirror again. Then I pinned the top on both sides in as close to an even manner as possible. It was also jutting down in a weird way, so I grabbed a Sharpie and drew where I wanted the bottom to end.
This is all a bit fiddly, I realize. I have a good eye for proportion & knew exactly what I wanted to achieve. If you have problems with this step, take a deep breath and figure out how what you've got differs from what you want and work from there. It'll take time and pain, but will be worth it.
In the end I got this:
You can see the sharpie lines, and how some of the edges are now curvier. I ended up straightening the seam that's under my arms from a curved seam to straight after this step, and that seemed to work fine.
Then, FINALLY, I cut my fabric. I used the black suiting I like so much at first, but it was too stretchy and I went back and got a nice easy black peachskin fabric instead and used that. After all that work on the pattern, I didn't *need* the stretch.
Whew. After all that, draping the white part should be a piece of cake right?
Right?
~Raiphin
hint: wrong.
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