September 2023

Level up! Sewing skills have increased by +1.

Or something along those lines would pop up after this masterpiece was finished if I were actually a character in a video game. Creating the character Asuna from the anime Sword Art Online was a delightful challenge... of not only my sewing abilities, but also my creativity and patience. I hit a few bumps along the way, ripped out and resewed more seams than I care to admit, and had to completely give up and restart certain aspects.

Ultimately, I found that this project taught me the value of patterns more than anything else I've made. I was able to use patterns for parts of this cosplay, piecing different things together to get the shapes that I wanted. I learned that ribbon for edging weird shapes is not as simple as I thought it would be, although the end result does look nice and clean, so it might still be worth the trouble.

The photoshoot itself was a whole kerfuffle itself. I had to accept the fact that modeling is probably not in my future. I felt so silly half the time, I couldn't stop laughing. For every good picture I've included here, there are probably 3 more bloopers on my camera roll. But an enormous shout out to my mom for always being my skilled and willing photographer, and managing to catch some good ones in the midst of the fun.