Is it Cosplay OR Clothing… How About Both?
SartorialJutsu cosplay and I back stage at Crown Championships of Cosplay 2023. Check out her Instagram! Sartorial Jutsu Cosplay
Nothing beats a comfortable cosplay, but when I showed the completed outfit to my friend at the con she said "Those are clothes! You made clothes!" Which is my favorite cosplay complement to date.
I made my “Casual Kyoshi” cosplay because C2E2 ended up having a big Avatar the Last Airbender theme for me:
1) A lot of the voice acting cast was there.
2) I was handling for my friend while she competed in the Crown Championship of Cosplay as Suki!
I felt like it would be fun to make a cosplay that was comfortable and also on theme for her. That and I was thinking of future casual Suki/Sokka cosplays with my partner (who at the time had Sokka's hair style).
I never sketched out a design for this cosplay, but I did have a few key pieces rolling around in my head. My main priorities were to keep it simple and keep it comfortable. I ended up deciding to go with a color blocked cardigan, wide legged palazzo pants with deep pleats, a brown tunic cut from an existing dress I had purchased for a different cosplay (RIP that cosplay), and an obi styled belt. I ended up making the patterns from scratch as I went, but I will share some links to tutorials you can use to make something similar!
I raided my fabric stash for green fabric. Thanks to a few good fabric de-stash finds on Facebook marketplace, I had plenty to choose from! I grabbed it all and measured it to see what fabric I could use for what pieces. I chose a dark forest-green knit fabric for the pants. A lighter olive toned fabric, that I think is some sort of rayon, seemed perfect for the cardigan.
I began with the tunic, which I wanted to be reminiscent of Suki's armor. I started with a brown knit dress I purchased on ThredUP. To get the tunic to the right length I put the dress on and marked where I wanted to cut with chalk. This dress has patterns that continue horizontally around the dress, so I was able to mark it in one area and follow that pattern edge around the skirt. BEFORE CUTTING ANYTHING, this is a knitted dress. I didn't want the entire thing to unravel on me. So I overlocked the on either side of the areas I wanted to cut. AFTER I overlocked on both side of where I wanted to cut the dress, I cut the bottom part of the skirt off the dress. I saved that part of the skirt, and ended up using it for my ewok cosplay (read more about that here!). This dress also had a lining that I kept as a part of the tunic. I planned to use it as pockets, but I ran out of time to add them before this convention. Maybe I'll remember for the next one? Next, Suki's armor has different sections over the hips. So I did the same thing as with cutting the skirt. I put the tunic on, drew out where I wanted to cut in chalk, then I overlocked the edge of both sides of the cut and made the vertical cuts. I folded the edges of the fabric to the wrong side and finished the edges with gold thread. I chose a cool honeycomb stitch because my machine had it, it was going to be visible and… why not? With the tunic looking good enough, I moved on to the pants.
For the wide legged pants, I started with a large rectangle of the dark green knit fabric. I folded this into 4ths by folding it in half long ways (hot dog style), and again on the short edge (hamburger style). Then I grabbed my favorite straight legged pajama bottoms a pattern from the crotch seams. The front seam is shorter than the back seam, so I made little patterns for both. I measured my leg length from my outer hip to the floor and cut the pants to length. Then I measured out what my waistband measurement needed to be (minus a couple inches because it's a stretch fabric). Because I wanted a 4 inch waistband, and needed to double the width so could fold it over. Having it be double layered made it strong enough to support the ridiculous amount of pants fabric I was attaching to it.
I stitched my front crotch seams together, then my back crotch seams, and the inside and outside seams. Then I started working on pleating the fabric with big deep pleats so that it would fit on the waist band. I made 12 pleats. 2 on each front leg that faced each other, 2 on each back leg that faced each other, and two more on each outer side seam that faced each other. To make sure the pleats look nice, I hand stitched the tops of the pleats together to help them keep their shape.
My pattern for the cardigan was based on a couple of pinterest posts I had seen and 2 cardigans that I currently own. The idea is that you can take a square piece of fabric and fold the corners in toward the center. The corners should meet somewhere in the middle. The rayon fabric I chose for this felt a little flimsy to me, so I doubled it and made it 2 layers of the rayon. I overlocked those two layers together before doing anything else with this fabric, because it was very floppy and did not like to hold its shape! To create the arms, the folded edges are sewn together, and further sleeves can also be added from there. So I took the corners and folded them into the middle and sewed the right top to right bottom and left top to left bottom. I measured the circumference of my forearm just below my elbow and left a little more than that amount of opening in the sleeve.
I wanted to bring some of the fabric from the pants into the cardigan, so I used scraps from the pants to make the additional sleeves and the border around the cardigan. For the border I cut 4in wide, long strips of the dark green knit fabric, I folded it in half and attached it to the Rayon. For the sleeve extensions, I measured the circumference of my wrist and the area of my forearm just below my elbow. I matched the forearm measurement to what I chose for the edge of the rayon part of the sleeve. I also measured the distance between my forearm (just below my elbow) and my wrist. The cuts ended up looking like 2 little trapezoid pieces. But I decided it needed a little bit more of a finishing touch, so I added a bit of the dark green as a cuff around my wrist. "Pro-ish" Tip when making sleeves and cuffs, make the pattern a little bit bigger than your wrist measurement, even with stretchy fabric. Your hand has to fit through the cuff, too! I sewed the trapezoids into sleeves and attached the larger opening to the rayon cardigan. Attaching sleeves is always the worst. It doesn't matter how many times I do it, I always have to triple check what I'm doing.
I lied. Waistbands are worse than sleeves. I don't know what it is about adding waistbands. I don’t have this issue with sleeves. But I never put in waistbands correctly the first time. NEVER! Even after checking it 3 times before sewing. So I spent 2 hours unpicking the waistband while trying very hard to not rip the knit fabric… Thankfully I attached it correctly the second time.
For some detailing I made a loosely obi inspired belt, and decided to make it double sided because it looked like a fun belt to wear with other outfits too. I cut out 6 rectangles. One 4in x18ish inch rectangle in each fabric type, and 2 very long 1in rectangles in each fabric type. I attached the olive and forest green 4inx18in rectangles rights sides facing in, and did the same for the thin strips. This way one side was dark green and the other side light green. I sewed everything inside out and turned them to the right side, but I left both short seams on the 4in rectangle open, and one side seam from each long rectangle open. I folded in the corners of the 4in rectangle, making sure to slip the thinner straps into in and sewed that down. I made it so that the thinner straps had the opposite color facing forward from the 4in rectangle.
Finally for my hat, I took a very faded green military style cap that I love, and made a removable band from the dark green fabric. I attached it with buttons and added a gold square detail to one side and hung 2 gold tassels off the edge. I learned the hard way that I cannot wear magnetic eyelashes if I'm going to have a metal detail that could swing into my eye…
This cosplay was VERY comfortable to wear, and I have worn parts of it as pieces in my everyday wardrobe since then. I have a couple of improvements I would like to make. I would like to eventually add pockets to the brown tunic part, and I would like to fix up the pants a little bit. Other than that, I think this is going to be a staple piece in my casual cosplay rotation!
If you're interested in making any parts of this, here are some links to tutorials you can follow!
Pants: https://theseamanmom.com/wide-leg-pants-pattern/
Cardigan: https://markazits.com/cocoon-granny-shrug-kofta-cardigan/
