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Falsetto. Eternal Sonata | Trusty Bell

Worn At - Minamicon 16; London May Expo 2010, Amecon 2010
Difficulty - 5/5
Time Taken - 50+ hrs
Cost - £200GBP
Costume Status -Active
Hardest Task - Catsuit, shoes
Easiest Task - Belt

Favourite Aspect - I completely love the overall costume its just so fun and pretty and interesting! My favourite parts though are undoubtedly my shoes and my suit. :]

Least Favourite Maybe the gloves? Simply because they're a bit shiny.

Why? - My friend Caylithe had been going on about Eternal Sonata for some time and had been planning on making a Viola costume. She told me I would make a good Falsetto and that I would love the game if I played it. I bought and played through very slowly (as I tend to do with games) and found Caylithe was spot on. I loved the game. I loved Falsetto and agreed I would join Caylithe in doing an Eternal Sonata costume.

Construction Notes

When I started this costume I had no idea what a trial and what a labour of love it would turn out to be. The was suggested to me by my friend Caylithe before I had played the game, because she wanted to cosplay Viola with a group. I reached the point of meeting Falsetto and the others in the game and loved her instantly. Her costume looked like a real challenge - and I wasn't wrong.

I was planning this costume for at least three months before needle even met fabric. I thought about everything, the kind of fabrics I wanted to use, how to get the defined shape of the base of her jacket. How to make the cat suit and the jacket - either as one thing, two things or three things. How I was ever going to make her gorgeous shoes! I spent so much time sketching and scribbling on paper my ideas... mainly for how I was going to construct the insane cat suit with no seams.

Of course is fairly impossible to construct anything without seams, so I had to take some liberties, especially as Falsetto's suit was two different colours. Eventually, an idea dawned on me to alter three different patterns and merge them into one. I ended up using the chest to the neck of an all-in-one gymnastic suit from the Kwiksew range. Then for the main torso I used from the chest to the waist the pattern for the sailor fuku I used for Sailors Jupiter and Neptune. Finally for the shorts, I used the same pattern I used for Warrior Rikku and simply merged each section together.

The materials I decided on were jersey cotton for the blue sections, and for the white I used a cotton elastine mix. Both are two materials I love to work with and are nice to wear because they're stretchy but soft.

The cat suit was made with a zip up the left hand side so it loosened to get it on. And the front of the white segment was kept open so I could step into the suit and then do it up there. It worked really well! When it came to deciding how the front would do up I went through several different options. On artwork and in game, the front is shown to have buttons, so I tried with buttons. Unfortunately elastaine mixes do not like making button holes. I tried a zip and also velcro, which worked, but were very uncomfortable. Eventually I went back to my old reliable hooks and eyes, and simply sewed buttons on to the front of the white section to be accurate and to be purely asthetic.

The next bit was the jacket, which was fairly simple in comparison to the cat suit. It was two sections of dark blue jersey cut in the same shape. The back then had a diamond-like shape cut out of the back, and the same shape sewn back in to it, in pale blue like on the artwork. The tail sections of the jacket were lined with Vilene, and had garden wire sewn into the bottom to retain the shape at the base. Sewn up at the top, three snap fasteners were sewn on, one in the middle and two at either side to keep the coat up. The opposing sides of the fasteners were sewn onto the suit. The criss-cross decor on the back was two strips of navy jersey, held up with hooks and eyes on the back, which also assists in keeping the jacket straight and stops it from falling or drooping. The smaller criss-crosses on the pale section was navy ribbon.

The striped sleeves were something I thought about for a while and then an idea suddenly hitme when I was staring at the materal one evening. I knew it would be prettymch impossible to find that kind of material anywhere, but it didn't occour to me until some time later that I could easily make the sleeve material myself. Which is what I ended up doing. Cutting strips of navy and ocean blue jersey and sewing them together. I then cut a fairly basic sleeve shape, giving it some extra size to create the puffiness of Falsetto's sleeves and sewed them to the main suit. When I actually tried the suit on with the sleeves and saw it looked pretty good, I actually ran around my living room proclaiming I was a genius. The white section of the sleeve was a piece of folded over white elastaine.

I lucked out on the stockings and clothes by trawling through ebay. The stockings are a 20 denier grey stocking with floral lace at the top - of which I bought three pairs just in case. And the gloves are fancy dress lycra opera gloves. They have a bit of a shine to them, but they work well for the costume as they go all the way up to my mid-bicep and underneath the sleeves, as per Falsetto's gloves in game and artwork.

Falsetto's shoes were something I was dreading to make. I seriously hate making shoe covers and things like that and I knew Falsetto's shoes would be complicated because of the platform sole and heel. I decided, fairly early on, the best way to accomplish the platform would be to buy a pair of platform shoes already and work off them. I scoured ebay looking for suitable white Gothic and Sweet Lolita shoes but the only ones I could find were to big for me, or cost a lot. I ended up checking a shop in the town where I live that sells Goth Lolita clothing. I lucked out, finding a pair of white red shoes in my size, with a suitable sole and heel. After buying them, it was time to deface them!

I started by spray painting the shoes white all over, then cut off unnecessary buckles and decorative items that I did not need to bulk up the shoe. After the paint was dry, I cut around one of the shoes four times to create a base out of navy jersey fabric and the sewed the two sides together to make two covers. Because jersey is stretchy, the covers fit really well and were actually a dream to glue to the shoe base. To create the large cuff that the shoes had, I kept some excess material when I originally cut the fabric and glued buckram underneath itto keep it sturdy and to create the cuff effect. After painting on the white pattern on the front, under the cuff I glued some white lace and the shoes were finished!

By this point, pretty much the while base costume was finished and it was the detailing that needed doing which was a hell of a lot of hand painting on the front of suit and on the jacket. I studied the decoration on Falsetto's suit intently so it was was when I painted it on. And went through I think, three pots of od dlon fabric paint doing all the details. To make the lines as straight as possible on the jacket, I marked out where to paint with masking tape and painted over that, removing the tape once the paint was dry. It works surprisingly well.

My belt was something I made in the space of a couple of evenings. I cut two pieces of buckram and covered them in ocean blue linin as I had run out of ocean blue jersey and Fabric Land weren't due to get any more in for a while. Once the two section were covered, they had the white pattern painted on, and the buckle made out of craft foam, painted with gold acrylic. To keep the belt together there is a small strip of velcro on either side of the belt, and embroidery threawas used to create the section from which her pouch dangles. The pouch itself is not a pouch and its purely decorative. It is a ball of spun paper, painted navy, with strips of navy ribbon glued to it, and white lace glued around the middle. More embroidery thread is used to keep it attached to the belt.

The last item for Falsetto was her wig. As I was going by artwork, where her hair is shown as blonde (where as in game it seems to go from blonde to silvery-grey). I bought three wigs for Falsetto in the end. First was a scruffy wig from Cosworx in platinum blonde which turned out to be too platinum. I tried to hand dye it, but colouring it with markers, but it didn't work too well. The second wig was one I bought from Cosplay Wig on ebay, which arrived and was still too light for Falsetto and also too long. Finally I found a wig I hoped would be suitable. It was from Professional Only and was advertised as a kind of two tone blonde. When it arrived it turned out to be a somewhat dirtyblonde colour, which was perfect as far as I was concerned. It was styled to be flicked at the back, and to have the central bang in the middle of my face as Falsetto does.

Undoubtedly one of the most challenging costumes I've done t date, if only for the complexity of the design and coming up with how to make the catsuit. But it is a costume I love, from a game I adore, so I am really happy with it. Throughout creating it, I never got sick of it or wanted to give up. It was a costume that really turned into a labour of love, and I am so glad its finished!

Photographs

Taken by Ashe


Taken by Nert


Taken by Pete, of Cosplay Fever


Taken by Redkun


Taken by Same Difference

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