In this you will find:
Materials used (not including mock muslin which I buy in bulk)
Estimated cost (often after coupons/sales)
Materials:
4 yards Polyester Black (~$30)
.5 yards Gold Performance Vinyl (~$10)
3 Offray 3/8"x9' Firefly Metallic Woven Wired Edge Ribbon-Gold (~$5)
1.5 Yards Gold Trim (~$5)
Gold tassel trim ($5)
Horsehair Braid ($9)
Other Items:
Purse ($10)
Boots ($20)
Wig ($30)
FYI, this is not a tutorial. I have no idea what I’m doing.
Background Info:
A few friends in a cosplay group for FE3H were missing a few characters including Annette, so I asked if I could join for Anime Los Angeles (January 10-13 - Ontario, CA).
Annette is an adorable character that loves to sing and bake (opposite of me). Her design, aside from her uniform, is very soft, round, and friendly. Her uniform matches the typical Gareg Mach uniforms (very inline with characters like Lysithea, and nothing too modified like Hilda or Dorothea), but has a pouch that is unique to her.
The Mock-Up:
I made a muslin mockup without a pattern by draping the fabric over the dress form and pining shapes to where I think they're supposed to go.
Construction:
I think what is commonly used is a Polyester/Cotton blend material for the uniforms. However, I went with a full polyester fabric because of the weight and feel of the underside. I feel like I won’t need to add a lining to it. It does appear shinier (oops), but it also appears blacker (Yay), which is also why I went with it.
Using the muslin mockup, I cut the black fabric to the same shapes and begin pinning that to the form.
I used the Offray Ribbon for the details. I’ve seen people use iron on vinyl which produces a nice, clean shape.
Wig
I picked a Peach wig from Arda Wigs because I felt like it matched Annette's hair color closest. I would have picked a straight style but items were on backorder. So I opted for their Ferrari style (wavy) and straightened it with a flat iron. Annette has two loops in her hair for some reason. In order to capture that shape, I used horsehair braid, which is a stiff polyester used to hold shapes in trims. I adhered that to the wig using Got2B hair gel. I left some strands on the side, rather than pulling it back because I like to hide the sides of my face with hair.
Details
My apoxie sculpt ended up drying up and I couldn’t figure a way to salvage it. So I used moldable foam to create the pieces and glued a safety pin to them to pin to the skirt and top. It wasn’t the best sculpting work, but it’d have to do. I was definitely too embarrassed to photograph it close up.
I painted the gold trim black since I didn’t want an excess of the gold. It didn’t quite work, but it didn’t not work… It actually looked kinda cool when it caught the light- like a black gold kind of effect. That, or I’m trying too hard to justify what I’ve done.
I could not find any buttons that had the same shape I wanted, so I painted the button covers black and sewed those on without the bottom half of the button covers. I had the same problem with painting the gold trim, that the black paint didn’t stick well (granted, it was cheap acrylic paint). But shhhh….
Post-Con Thoughts:
At con, the glue ended up peeling off of the boots and the foam pieces and things started falling off. (I even lost one without knowing!) The buttons were extremely loose given the shape and how I sewed them on. The ribbons didn’t capture the look I was going for, either. In the future, I'd like to use 3D printed pieces for the embellishments and buttons. I’ve seen others use iron on transfer for the design, but I wanted something with more texture (which is why I chose the type of ribbon in the first place). I would use a different kind of trim in lieu of the ribbon or embroider the design.
This did end up being cheaper than buying it from a costume/cosplay shop, though, and was really fun to try and pattern myself! I definitely learned the importance of not taking any shortcuts and have ideas to plan out my construction a little bit better.
