I promised it and now I have it ready for you. Here is the breakdown of the process I used for my Kitsune costume. I think I've got everything here.
First we have the materials and tools
Fabric: 25 yards various cotton fabrics, 6 yards Dupioni Silk, small strip velvet
Paint/dye: black & purple Dharma Acid Dye, various Speedball and Higgins Ink
Wig: LA 4000 from WigsByRed
Other materials: Aromatic Cedar board, hemp rope, wood glue, Wonderflex, chicken wire, clear craft glue, craft foam, grommets, black cording, satin embroidery thread, flip flops, silver bells, fox tails, silk and cotton thread, Shoe Goo.
Tools: band saw, chop saw, dremmel, hand chisel, leather punch, razor blade, various brushes, sharpie, heat gun, dado blade saw
Parts of the costume:
2 under kimono/yukata
Hand dyed and painted silk over-kimono
Corseted obi made from black on black brocade.
Hand braided obijime cord
Chiffon obiage.
Handmade geta with designs burned into the wood.
Wonderflex kitsune mask
Styled/dyed wig.
Hand dyed fox tails
Tabi socks (purchased)
Time spent:
Black Yukata - 8 hours cutting/sewing
Purple Yukata - 8 hours cutting/sewing
Outer Kimono: 10 hours sewing/cutting, 2 hours for gradient dye, 22 hours painting
Geta: 4 hours to cut and put together, 3 hours to draw designs & burn into wood, 2 hours braiding toe loops, 2 hours sewing and stuffing straps, 30 minutes sanding.
Obijime cord: 1.5 months braiding at various times while in training at work. Total time is unknown.
Obi: 2 hours cutting and ironing pieces together with wonderweb. 2 hours sewing. 6 hours cutting holes and attaching grommets.
Mask: 8 hours making first 2 initial masks that were not used. 2 hours shaping chicken wire form. 1 hour forming Wonderflex. 30 minutes coloring design.
Wig: 6 hours cutting foam and gluing hair to back of the two pieces. 15 minutes painting inside ears. 1 hour gluing ears to wig and bits of foxfur to inside of ears. Allowed glue to dry overnight. 30 minutes painting tips.
Obiage: 1 hour cutting/sewing.
Tails: 1 hour dying
Total: approximately 100 hours (not including drying time)
The first item I started on was the Obijime cord. I had a friend show me how to use a Kumihimo disk and found a pattern I liked. With a bit of teaking and figuring out the color patterns I got started...in March. I was able to work on this while in training at work and between calls once training for the new account was over. After a while the process flowed and I would work on it for 10-30 minutes here and there while doing other things.
The second item was the geta. I purchased an aromatic cedar plank from . I figured that if I couldn't get the traditional type of wood I wanted something that was still a somewhat soft wood that had some nice colors. This one also had the benefit of smelling wonderful! My friend found a pattern/process to make the geta online and we went of their basic measurements (with a bit of adjustments). We used the chop saw to get the lengths needed and the band saw to round out the corners. After that I initially used a dremmel and chisel to cut out the indents on the bottom for the ha (the upright stilt portion of the geta). The first time I wore them outside the house one of the ha popped off, so I later got another friend's help and re-cut the indents using a dado blade saw. I drilled the hole in and used hemp rope for the basic portion of the straps, then I sewed a cover out of a scrap of velvet I had lying around then covered and stuffed the strap for comfort. A bit of hot glue for the middle toe strap, some tying and the straps were good. I sanded the edges and and rough spots from cutting. As a finishing touch I drew, then burned, 2 foxes on each geta (front and back) and added silver bells on the inside bottom. On the second test run of the geta I found that I needed to add something to the bottom of the ha as walking around the Asian festival was very loud and cracked one of the corners. I cut down and glued some flipflops to the bottom. This worked for NDK, but the foam/rubber was trashed afterward. I had a co-worker tell me about this awesome stuff called ShoeGoo. After going to 3 different shoe stores I finally found some after being directed to a skater shop. I replaced the flipflops with it and it worked wonderfully at Anime Banzai.
The third piece of the costume to be worked on was the yukata. I started with the black inner one as it would be the smallest. I gathered some basic measurements (shoulder width, shoulder to floor, shoulder to hip) and started. Yukata are actually quite easy to make as they are straight measurements and seams. I did not use any pattern for any of the yukata/kimono aside from the basic measurements. When I was almost done with all of the cutting and sewing (only had the hem left) I tried it on...and found out I'd made the neck and front cross over section too wide. It was still cute and worked for general wear, but I needed the inner most yukata to close tight up to my neck or it would not show with the other layers. Luckily I had bought enough lining for 2, but had to go back and re-buy the black patterned fabric. The second one turned out perfect. It also allowed me to avoid some of the sewing mistakes I made on the first one. I tested it out at Conduit and it worked pretty well, so I moved on to the second yukata - the purple one.
The purple yukata had some slight measurement adjustments made - longer in the body and longer hanging sleeves. It went much faster as I'd gotten the hang of how the fabrics worked and the best order to do the seams in. This one was tested out at the Asian festival along with the geta after the ha were reinforced.
Sometime after starting the Obijime, but before the kimono I started work on my Kitsune mask. The idea behind this costume, as well as some of my friends, was to create Japanese animal spirits in the Kabuki style. We were all planning on having masks for the animal spirit, but also some characteristic of them within our costume too. For the mask I started out with a chicken wire frame and paper mache. I used mostly cut up coffee filters instead of newspaper and mixed gesso into my paste for better stability. It took forever to dry...then my dog decided it was a chew toy. Luckily I was able to re-use the wire frame and made a second one. This time I started with the traditional newspaper base and only added the coffee filters after the first or second layer was dry. That worked much better. I also made sure that it was up where the dog couldn't get it. At that point my roommate received a large order of Wonderflex and I thought it would be good to have the outer layer covered with this awesome stuff. It worked pretty well, but was really heavy, so I decided to re-make the wire frame. This time I did it out of a single piece of finer chicken wire mesh. I figured that if I could bend the single mesh piece to work then I could do the same with the Wonderflex. It worked beautifully, though I did a double layer of the Wonderflex for stability. Once it was done I was playing around with the designs and decided to trace out the purple kabuki-like markings with the pencil then color them in with Sharpee. The design looked good enough that I went ahead and sprayed it, rather than taking another step to paint it.
Next up was the main outer Kimono. I cut out the pieces, again making the body and sleeves longer, and sewed the sleeve pockets and the body separately. I wanted to dye them different gradients, so they would have to be attached after the dye process was finished. This actually took me a while to build up the courage to do as I knew that once I started I would have to live with the result as I didn't have enough money to re-purchase the fabric. I did several test batches to make sure I could get the gradient and color I wanted. Sooo very glad that I did. The first color I purchased from Dharma came out burgandy, NOT the purple I needed. The second dye order I did consisted of a few different purples and a blue, just in case none of them were what I needed. Their Deep purple turned out to be exactly what I wanted. With the help of yet another friend I did a gradient dip dye. I allowed the dye to dry and, about a week later, I started painting the design.
To paint the design I borrowed a small quilting frame from my mom and stretched the body of the kimono out on it. I then took a concentrated form of the dye I had left over and started painting the design. I'd already roughed out the design in my sketch book and basically free handed the painting from there. I ended up having to add extra details as I'd gotten a bit overzealous and flipped dye on one of the white areas. One tree ended up to be two.
I used the dye for all of the dark, shadowed areas. Once they were dry I used white Higgins ink to paint in the highlights. During all of this painting I also used a combination of ink/dye/water to help with some of the faded areas. Basically I had 3 bowls one with the concentrate of either the ink or dye, one with straight water and one with a mixture. To make the process feel a bit more authentic for me I purchased 3 sizes of traditional Japanese paint brushes and used those for everything except the very smallest details. Once I had the painting done on the body I repeated the process on each sleeve using a towel on the inside as they had already been sewn into shape and were too small for the quilting frame.
After all of the painting was done I took the pieces outside and washed them with cold water and dawn dish detergent. When I initially started adding the highlight details with the ink I figured that most of it would wash out in this stage, but that I would have an outline to re-do them. To my surprise the details didn't wash out at all. At this point I was very happy since it would have meant an additional 8-10 hours to repaint the highlights. After the silk was dry I added the final painted details - the crest. I wanted to make sure this would stay crisp and didn't want the black ink to bleed, so they were done in straight ink on dry fabric. I traced out the design from a stencil onto the fabric first as I wanted them to be exact. After that I attached the sleeves to the body and then the lining. The collar was last and also got crests painted on before it was completed.
In the middle of painting the kimono I used some of the initial dye bath and dyed the tips of 3 fox tails. I had originally ordered 5, but one was torn apart by the cats and one was shorter than I wanted.
Once the kimono was finished I felt very accomplished, but wasn't done. I still had to make the Obi. I wanted to use a satin brocade, but knew that it would be too thin and slippery, so I fused it to some bottom weight cotton for stiffness, then made 3 pieces - front, back & drum. The front and back portions were each sewn and then I punched and cut the holes for the grommets. This took a long time as I did it entirely by hand and the sides were very thick with the doubled fabric edges. The drum was a bit easier, but I found the extent of how many layers/thickness my sewing machine could handle.
Once the majority of the sewing was completed I remembered that I still needed to complete the ears on the wig. I used an LA4000 wig I got from Red along with some leftover fibers from another one that she had trimmed down. I shaped the ears using craftfoam that had a sticky side. Once shaped I glued the fibers to the outside and pinned the ears to the wig to hold their shape. After the ears were dry I removed them, painted the insides a more flesh tone, glued bits of a destroyed fox tail to the inside and then glued them to the wig base. The good thing about the LA4000 is that it has a solid scalp that I was able to attach the ears to. I waited about a day for the rest of the glue to dry and used some purple Higgins calligraphy ink to paint the tips.
The last piece I worked on for this costume was the Obiage. I had originally thought that I would not have this part of the costume, but decided later that I did. It was just a simple rectangle of fabric with the edges hemmed in.
Whew...that was long. If you've gotten this far thank you for reading. Now here's a combination of the pictures I used for my documentation and to show bits of the process.