A Project and Shopping

One of my costuming projects for the coming convention season is Queen Sai (alt. Saiou) from the Twelve Kingdoms anime. She's a rather obscure character, appearing in only two episodes, but I like that - I'm not likely to see five other cosplayers as the same character. The anime is based in both plot and aesthetics on Chinese mythology, and her outfit is a much-simplified version of traditional Chinese robes.

I'm making her robes from silk habotai for several reasons:

• Light weight to fight the summer heat.
• Easy to dye and work with.
• It's silk! Love it, and it's reasonably historically accurate.
  

For those interested, I bought my silk (and dying supplies) from Dharma Trading Co., one of my favorite sources for costuming needs. I'll be decorating a silk paddle fan with silk painting, but I'm going to hand embroider the simple floral design on Saiou's outer coat/robe. I'm a casual embroiderer: it's a craft I've practiced off and on since high school, but it's never been a great passion. But I plan on this costume being a competition piece, so I've been gathering reference materials (such as Painting with a Needle: Learning the Art of Silk Embroidery by Young Yang Chung) and seeking out better quality materials than I normally use.

I plan to do the embroidery in silk threads and was pleasantly surprised to discover a needleworking shop near me that carries a fabulous selection of such supplies, Fireside Stitchery. I spent a fun hour this past Saturday testing all sort of color combinations and comparing different types of silk thread. Who knew there were so many? I finally settled on Soie d'alger in a range of pinks and greens since I'm going for a more naturalistic look than shown in the flat anime art, bringing home a precious little stash of skeins.

I have to draft a pattern, make a muslin (test garment), and dye the fabric before starting the embroidery. Also at issue is how to mount the fabric for doing the work. The size of the piece plus the rather fragile fabric are making for a tricky balancing act. While I'd love a slate frame (one day, one day...when I start that 18th-century gown...), I'll probably wind up with careful hooping. I might indulge and at least get a higher quality hoop than I currently own. I've considered doing the embroidery on smaller pieces of fabric and treating the pieces as removable motifs, but I'm not sure what that would do to the drape of the garment. I might at least experiment with that approach to see what happens - it would certainly make cleaning the costume easier!