Tentacruel Gijinka designed by Cowslip
Anime Matsuri Hawaii 2015
Photos by Zarli Win
 

MATERIALS

- Cotton
- Satin
- Cheap umbrella
- Fake flowers
- LEDs
- Ribbon
- Beads and charms
 

PROCESS

I fell in love with a lot of Cowslip's Pokemon designs and settled on Tentacruel because of the beautiful modified kimono. I spent a good chunk of time looking up furisode kimono and yukata and went with a hybrid of the two: furisode kimono, but made out of cotton, which is what yukata is made with. I found this fabulous website that had a great tutorial on sewing yukata, so I did my best to follow along and make my modifications as I needed to.

I made mine lined for a few reasons. One, the sleeves have a visible black lining in them and because the blue fabric is on the thin side, I couldn't get away with having black lining under blue cotton next to single layer unlined cotton. I also didn't want to deal with a flimsy costume.

One of the best parts about sewing kimono is that each piece is a rectangle, designed to be cut out of shorter width Japanese silk. Since I was using wide American cotton, I could fudge some of the measurements. My biggest issue was making the piece wide enough to fit around my hips and butt, but not look too frumpy up top.

The costume wasn't particularly difficult to make, since it was just cutting and sewing rectangles, but it was time consuming and took a lot of math. I miscalculated on my kimono length and forgot to add in extra inches for the ohashori, so my kimono was a little bit shorter than I would have liked. I also didn't make a juban, mostly because I just 1000% forgot to. I had to keep reminding myself that since this was just fan art and not true kimono wearing, it was okay, but it still bugged me!

The obi gave me a bit of headache because I chose to use satin lined with heavy cotton. The fabric was so slippery and wouldn't hold a musubi well. The big front bows were just rectangles on a wire that slips in the front, similar to a lot of "easy" yukata obi you can buy now.

The umbrella was my favorite part! I found a cheap one online and covered it in matching blue cotton. I took a bunch of different textured flowers and spray painted them ruby and glued little rhinestones on so that they would sparkle in the sun. The ribbons were dyed with Sharpie ink and the buttons holding them on are just spray painted googly eyes! Now that's crafty. I had a friend handle the battery pack and wiring for the LEDS. We chose running lights that would allude to rain showers. The lights were pretty blinding, but so much fun at night!

I made a very rushed, very poor quality version of this a few months prior, but knew I wouldn't be happy with it until I redid it right. It's a heavy costume, but a fun one!