Yue Omake ~ The Making of the Most Challenging Costume

Original Manga Art Copyright CLAMP

"This costume was a challenge and a half."

Let's start by saying that I have a family to tend and don’t have the luxury of sewing whenever I want. We brought my machine and all the necessary supplies to the hotel, and I spent most of the con finishing outfits for both Yue and Sakura. It wasn't really a very fun way to spend the weekend, and I'd rather not do that again. Basically, anything that was hot glued was done at the hotel and will probably be redone before the next wear. The following comments & pictures should give you all an idea of how each stage of the costume went.

Ah, the things we do for fame and fortune - Prof.Tomoe
Where's the fortune? - Mrs.Tomoe
Well, at least we didn't spend a fortune - Prof.Tomoe

Click here for the final bill

Armed with a printout of the character, we spent a morning at Joann's choosing fabric. We avoided the ever-popular shiny satin because it's too flashy and usually too limp. The white jacket had to be very opaque and matte for photos so the Prof. finally found rubberized drapery lining. Then we wanted high-contrast blue trim so we found antique satin in 2 different shades.

I chose a pattern for a suit jacket with a Chinese-style collar so that I could also use it for the inner tunic. Then I drew, redrew and re-redrew patterns for the chest designs & collar, the long coattails, and the wrist & foot cuffs on Kraft paper and newsprint.

An old bed sheet went under the scissors (a sacrifice to the costume gods ^_^) to make a dummy of the upper part of the jacket for fitting. The final, rubberized fabric retained every hole from pinning & sewing so I didn't want to make many mistakes or adjustments on it. The presser foot of the sewing machine also left marks so I had to use a zipper foot that could adjust to run only in the seam allowances.

Ever have visions of crossing the stage as a work-in-progress costume? I did, plenty of times - Prof.Tomoe

The tunic is the same as the jacket pattern, but I cut it on the small size lines rather than the medium so that it would work as a shirt. We then trimmed it into a dickey because even though the shirt was sleeveless, it was too hot. This part was done entirely at our hotel room so I didn't have time to sew snaps to close the front. We used hot glue & Velcro, but that only sort of worked.

The chest globe has 4 parts: one half of a snap-together plastic ornament, a blue reflector, a small plastic gem, and a transparent CD blank. The ornament & reflector just happened to be the same size and are held together with a thin strip of clear packing tape. We glued this to the CD blank but later had to reattach it with double-stick tape. The small silver "stone" is actually the back of a plastic gem. A strip of Velcro mostly held it onto the dickey, but the whole setup needs to be redone.

A length of boning and 2 pieces of plastic from a notebook cover help the collar and front stand rather than sag. I used "invisible" nylon thread to appliqué the chest designs onto the white jacket. The nylon is great for this type of thing and saves on finding matching thread for every color of fabric or ribbon.

The black "ties" across the front of the jacket are mainly decorative and consist of soutache plus a plastic bead for each "knot." Soutache frays instantly so I cut each length slightly longer and coated 1/2" of the ends with clear-drying fabric glue. When it dried, I cut through the glued areas for crisp ends. This works for most types of cord, braid, or ribbon. Because of the way I stacked the soutache, I couldn't run it through the machine and ended up having to hand-sew them onto the jacket.

The black ribbon on the tails is one continuous length which hides any unevenness where the light blue trim meets at the seams. For this application, double-faced ribbon is easier to use than single.

The upper jacket and the tails are 2 separate units which I joined at the waist after completing each one. Upholstery thread and a strip of stiff crinoline along the upper seam made an extra-strong bond at this seam. After all the work put in, I didn't want anything to rip! Upholstery thread's a tad more expensive than the usual stuff, but it's worth it for the time & effort it saves -- great for hand sewing snaps, hooks, buttons.

We found the big, long tassels at an upholstery fabric store but couldn't find big glass or wooden beads anywhere! Finally, (another last-minute item), the Prof. cut holes into 2 ping pong balls & painted them with nail polish to produce dead-on Yue tassels. The balls actually cover the bulge at the top of the tassels to give them a continuous look.

Mental note - keep freshly painted objects apart from one another until completely dry - Prof.Tomoe

The hand and foot gems are glass home décor items. We sorted to find 2 smaller ones for the hands & 2 larger ones for the feet. They are hot-glued in place. Hot glue can be a touchy thing. Next time, I'll get the slow-setting kind to see if it's any easier to use.

The pants are white cotton scrubs with patch pockets on each leg. I had warned the Prof. at the start that he would have to buy pants if I didn't finish sewing in time, but it was just as well because A) I wouldn't have made pockets, and B) the thinner material made the whole costume less sauna-like. We removed the original ribbed cuff, I attached the blue foot things, and -voila!- Yue pants. The part I like best about the foot things is that I got all the raw edges of the seams to turn to the inside.

The belt & hair ties are the same darker blue fabric as the collar. The belt simply tied around the waist. The hair ties were hot glued around the pony tail, but I'd like to get some barrel-style hair clips that would stay on better.

Yue's hair was actually 7 feet long, but I could just see people stepping on it and yanking my wig off - Prof.Tomoe

"The wings & wig were a challenge and a half."

When you watch Card Captor Sakura, the most prominent thing about Yue is his wings, so it was imperative this costume be as true to the original Anime character as possible. Unlike Sakura whose wings shed feathers like crazy, Yue has a more refined flight mechanism. I wasn't about to spend $200 or more for 'real' wings, so I opted for the next best thing - design them myself.

Equally prominent is Yue's seemingly endless locks of shimmering white hair. It was going to be quite a trick to wear that much hair and keep it looking decent. The wig ended up costing $51 including shipping - nearly a third of the cost of the entire costume.

Let's start with the easy one - or what I thought was going to be the easiest - THE WIG. Yue's true form stands every bit of 6 feet tall from what I can tell, and his hair continues for at least another foot or two! I knew from the beginning finding a wig that long wasn't going to be a trip to Spencer's Gifts.

I began hunting for the wig about 2 months before AWA7. For one, I had never worn a wig and didn't know the types of things to look for when selecting one. There are countless web sites that sell every shape imaginable, some ranging in the hundreds of dollars. I started by sending a picture of the character to different wig outlets hoping someone could recommend something I could afford. It seemed that the only thing long enough was a LADY GODIVA wig, the 5 foot long version. I could only find one place in the universe that even said they could get a white version - Costumers Quarterly in Orlando. I checked their site, sent an email, and got a response within a day or so. The girl I talked to said they could get a white 5 foot godiva for around $50, so I said I'd take it.

About 4-5 days later it arrived, but it didn't look like what she had described. For one, it was about 3 feet too short. By this time we were 2 weeks away from the con, and I nearly freaked. I can't wear this thing - it's only 36"! Nice wig though. It was shiny and I could easily run a pick through it. Minimal tangling. I called her up and said where's my wig ( damn it ) and she said she would sent the correct one right away. 2 days later I got it and it was definitely 5 feet long. Only trouble was, I couldn't get it untangled for nuthin'. Not only that, but the front of the wig had very little hair to style, so it just wasn't the thing I wanted after all.

I thought if we cut the sides of the first wig to length, maybe we could use the leftover to create a ponytail to attach to the back. Now I wonder if the character designer for Yue had us cosplayers in mind when they drew the hair band in exactly the right spot we needed to attach the extra length? A mystery for the ages I guess.

Meanwhile I'm still racking my brain thinking about the mechanical aspect of the wings. A month prior, I started playing with paper, and mocked up a few armatures on my Kung Fu dude using pipecleaner and masking tape. The shape was based on a poster from Ah! My Goddess and a Smile comic book we had gotten at AFO2. That started my affinity for Clover, but that's another story altogether.

They absolutely had to be lightweight and simple in design. With anything, the more complex it is, the more likely something will mess up. I found the perfect material to make the feathers at Lowes - DuPont Styrofoam house wrap. $25 for a huge stack of the stuff was light enough for me to carry on my back, so that decision was pretty easy. Next came the framework. Again lightweight and simple, so I picked up a few shelving supports and a couple packs of bolts. Got some 100lb fishing line too.

The shape of the feathers was printed onto banner paper so I could make it big enough for the real thing. Then I just cut a 1/4 inch off the template for each feather I made. I was not trying to be accurate with the wings. Using an X-acto knife, I proceeded to shape the foam feathers. This stuff cuts real easy and is laminated on both sides to give it extra rigidity. 8 cans of the cheapest white spray paint I could find at WalMart was used to cover both sides of the feathers. Areas where the plastic came off the foam made it nearly impossible to spray paint.

Also, while we're talking about spray paint - never try to do anything having to do with spray paint if you live in Florida. The paint just doesn't dry - EVER! I invested a couple bucks on those spray can handles so my finger wouldn't fall off from pressing the spray can button. I did 2 coats on both sides and had an extra can to do touch ups. I also made sure to cut the feathers out in such a way that the HUGE DOW CHEMICAL logo wasn't facing the front of the costume.

Stress would cause the feathers to shred where they attach to the frame, so I used eyelets to reinforce them. A mistake that I made was not tightening the bolts just before showtime. While on stage, one of the feathers came off when a nut unscrewed. Luckily, the fishing line used to connect it to the others held up, and I was able to repair it.

Also the spray paint made the foam feathers more brittle, and the tips will break off if they touch something stationary. A quick fix with the X-acto knife solved those broken tips with no problem.

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Now's your chance to play with the wings. Click the images and try your hand operating them.

Enjoy.

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In conclusion, I think this costume was a great learning experience. It managed to win Best Technical award at the biggest Anime convention this side of the Mississippi, but had it not been for the support of fellow FL Cosplayers and my family, I'm sure it would not have gone so well. I purposely didn't include certain details since some things are best left to the imagination. ^_^

Time to work on the next costume.....