A Maid Costume? or An Anime Cosplay Fix

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This next craft project is part of the preparations for a special event,  Phoenix Comic Fest (formerly known as Phoenix Comicon).

It’s next week and it’s fun to wear something special for conventions, cosplay or otherwise.

That brings us to the costume.  This costume came from another lucky pack.  It’s sold here at Bodyline and it is supposed to be a maid café uniform from the anime series, Love Live. 

It is kind of both a lucky and in-lucky piece, here’s why.

Underneath the gold necktie (which is a little too gaudy for my tastes) is only two buttons.  You should be able to unbutton the collar and pull it over your head, but even when unbuttoned it is too small to fit over most heads.  That includes mine.

And beyond that issue, there is the matching headband with the large gold bow, also not quite my taste.

And this odd pair of gloves.  They are intentionally designed to fit only part of the way on your hands.  It probably looks cute on an animated character, but not so much in real life.

Anyway, you’ve seen the before…

…And here’s the after.

It looks so much better, mainly because now I can actually put it on.

Here’s how I did it.

First, obviously that collar had to go, because the convention is a family event.  Top-less maids are not appropriate.

After cutting of the entire collar part, I also temporarily removed the sleeves.  I found that the top was a little big on me at the shoulders, so I needed to take off about an inch.

After re-sewing the shoulders and sleeves, I added lace to the new square-ish neckline.  Then I added pink grosgrain ribbon along the edge with little matching bows. 

I added ribbon neck straps too, these look so cute when tied around the neck.

I also added some ribbon on the cuffs of the sleeves.  Everything matches!  :)

Now for the skirt.  Obviously, with all the pink used on the top the gold trim on the skirt had to go, so I carefully removed it with a seam ripper.

This revealed the odd way they hemmed to skirt.  They folded the fabric on the right side and used the ribbon to cover the raw edge.  I’m not sure what to think about this.

Anyway,  I just went with the flow and covered that raw edge with my pink ribbon and added lace along the edge of the skirt.  Now the skirt matches too!

Now on to the headband.  Obviously the first thing to do was remove the bow using my seam ripper again.  But that left it a little too plain.

I just added two rows of lace across the headband with a row of pink ribbon in between.  All that was left was to add a pink bow.  Much better.

And the final change was to add some pink ribbon to the apron to help tie it in with the rest of the outfit.  I thought about adding some small bows too, but for now I’m okay with this.

Here’s the updated list:

• Dress makeover
• Doll undies
• Cameo and Hearts
• Blouse makeover
• Phone case
• Outfit
• Mother’s Day
• Costume fix
• Jammies
• Bonnet

Seven down, three more to go.  The next one may go up later than expected thanks to the convention and certain other blogging issues.  But it will be really cute, so look forward to that!