The Making of a Freya Costume

I embarked on this project for a couple of reasons; firstly, I really liked Freya in Final Fantasy IX (she's an anthromorph, a Lancer, and she's got angst... I just couldn't resist! ^_-) Secondly, her costume gave me several opportunities to try things I hadn't done before, such as mask-making, and I'm always looking to broaden my experience in costuming.

I did a lot of research before starting; I checked out some resources in the fursuit community to get ideas on mask-making, drew my own sketches of Freya in her full costume since there seems to be woefully little in the way of reference pictures of her (even in the artbook), and stared long and hard at the FMV sequences in the game (even going so far as to go through particular sequences frame-by-frame at times...).

But enough with the setup - on to the construction!

The "Undergarments":
The shirt and pants that Freya wears under her coat were pretty easy; I took Folkwear's Chinese Jacket pattern (which I also used for the coat) and made the shortest length for her shirt, making the style in which the front panels simply meet in the center front with frog closures instead of overlapping. I then attached elastic to the sleeves to make the ruffled cuffs; stretching the elastic while sewing it to the sleeve and then letting it shrink back down afterwards produced nearly-perfect cuffs. The pants were Green Pepper's "Polar Pants" pattern, cut off just below the knee, with the same elastic applied once again for cuffs. The pants and shirt are made out of Laundered Challis, which was a nice lightweight fabric and also happened to be available in the right goldenrod color.

The tights were a little trickier; I combined Green Pepper's "Sport tights/Capris" and "Polar Socks" patterns to create a set of full-foot tights, and ended up having to sew them twice, as the first fabric I tried to use wasn't strong enough and ended up tearing along the seams. (Oh well, it wasn't quite the right color anyway. ;P) The silver "buttons" below the knee are silver liquid lame stuffed and pulled over circular pieces of tagboard, then hand-sewn onto the tights. And then of course there were the furry toes that got sewn on later...

The Coat:
The coat is Folkwear's Chinese Jacket pattern again, heavily modified: different collar, added length at the bottom, extra gores on the side for fullness... The edges of the sleeves, side seams, and bottom hem of the coat are wired to keep them flared open. The coat is made of pleather, and lined with Ambiance Lining. The center back seam was left open from the waist down to accomodate the tail. The collar was made without a pattern; the inside piece is reinforced with plastic mesh to keep it in place, and the whole thing is trimmed with thick white bias tape, with wire inside the front seams for shaping. The coat actually had to be made twice; first I cut it too short, so I played with it until I got it looking right, then used that as a pattern to make a second coat. Which is a tad too long. ^^;; It somehow still didn't fit well, either, so I ended up having to mess with it again to get it to fit... It was kind of a hassle, needless to say. ;P

The Tabard:
The tabard was made without a pattern; the panels are Baroque Satin (I originally really didn't want it to be shiny like that, but it was the only fabric I could find, with my limited fabric-shopping resources, that had all the right colors so I wouldn't have to change fabric textures between panels. Oh well...), and the gold designs are liquid lame, glued on with fabric glue. My brother helped figure out what the top-left design looked like from the itty bitty, weird-angle version of it in the artbook. ^^;; I also noticed, somewhat at the last minute, that the tabard actually has black stripes down its sides - originally I'd mistaken the stripes just for shading in the rendering, but nope, they're stripes and they're on both sides of the tabard, as proved by a pencil sketch of her facing the other way. (No, I'm not an obsessive accuracy-freak, why do you ask?) The tabard has a leather strip machine-sewn at the top which connects to the rest of the shoulder harness.

The Shoulder Harness:
I ordered more leather from Buckskin Leather (they're wonderful people) for the harness. I cut the strips out of the leather by hand, since it was light enough weight to use scissors on. The tabard-strip is sewn to the shoulder straps, but pretty much everything else is fastened together with snaps. I used heavy-duty snaps and a plier kit to put them in, and everything held together just fine. I also put some extra snap halves on the bottom straps for the extra studs in the picture, because as aforementioned I am an obsessive accuracy freak. (I'm sure no one else notices them, but I know they're there!) The shoulderplates are actually held to their leather straps via thick bolts, since that's that it looks like in the picture. The shoulderplates themselves are more plastic mesh shaped with wire to curve around my arm, then covered in muslin and painted with "pearl" metallic paint for a nice sheen.

The Hat:
The hat started out its life as a wireframe. It was originally way too big, so I had to start over and scale it down (it's still a little on the big side, I think, but acceptably so...). I then covered the wireframe in plaster gauze, then once that was dry stretched pleather over it, fastening it with various types of glue and doing my best to hide the seams. There's small amounts of stuffing in selective places under the pleather to provide a smooth look. The "ears" on the hat are plastic mesh with wire along the ridges; the wire helps it keep its curving shape and also makes the ridge look raised (with the help of a thick line of hot glue). Liquid lame once again was glued tightly to the ears on both front and back. The bottom circles are stuffed like the buttons on the tights, and then the ears are sewn onto the hat through holes poked in the circles and pleather and plaster. That turned out not to be quite enough support, though, so they're also superglued in a couple of places. Whew...

The Tail:
The tail was pretty simple, though it did end up being slightly shorter than I was planning - I underestimated the extra length needed in the fur to accomodate the full length of the wire and didn't feel like cutting another piece out of my dwindling fur supply. ^^;; The fur was cut basically as a long, narrow triangle, sewn together to form a gradually narrowing tube. The wire was threaded through a plastic mesh triangle at the base and bent so as not to fall out; then I opened a hole in the back seam of the pants to allow it to go through. The plastic mesh triangle was then sewn to the inside of the pants on the backseam, with the addition of a triangle of cardboard to keep the wire from digging into my skin. (My sewing machine didn't complain about sewing through both cardboard and plastic mesh... I am shocked...) Once the wire was firmly attached to the pants, I threaded the wire into the tube of fur and used my umbrella, since my hands couldn't fit into the narrowest parts of the tail, to push stuffing into the tail and get it nice and full-looking. I then sewed the top of the fur tube to the pants to close it off.

The Hands and Feet:
The hands and feet were originally Green Pepper's "Polar Paws" pattern. For Zero, I discovered that making the largest size glove the pattern allowed and stuffing the fingers gave me fairly effective large hands without losing too much manual dexterity. For Freya, who only has four fingers on her hands, the pattern wasn't big enough - I couldn't fit two of my fingers into one glove finger. I ended up modifying the pattern by making the backs of the fingers double the width of the largest pattern size, and leaving the fronts as they were. This took a lot of patience with the sewing machine to get the seams right, but the results were worth it; I had furry gloves with large, stuffed fingers, giving me a very large but proportional paw that still allows me a good amount of manual dexterity. My first and pinky fingers have their own glove fingers, and my two middle fingers share the middle glove finger, which seems to be comfortable for my hands.

For the feet I did much the same thing, except widened the backs of the fingers even further, to more like 2.5x, and removed the thumb instead of the pinky finger. The feet were much too wide to conform to my actual foot without a tremendous amount of funny-looking wrinkling, so I ended up having to cut some extra fabric away before attaching it to the tights. They were hand-sewn onto the tights while I was wearing them by a friend of mine so that I could be assured they'd fit properly. ^^;; They fit perfectly over my real toes, so that I can wiggle them, and when I walk on my toes it really looks like Freya standing on her toes. I'm very proud of those toes. ;)

The claws are different on the hands and feet; for her hands, I took loops of wire and bent them so that the claws would curve naturally inward instead of being just flat triangles attached to the fingers. I then hand-sewed plastic mesh around the wire, which kept the plastic mesh bent properly and gave the claws a more solid structure. After that I wrapped each claw in masking tape, then covered it in white muslin, painted with pearl paint. The foot claws are muslin pieces sewn together, stuffed, painted with the pearl paint, then hand-sewn onto the tips of the toes.

The Mask:
This was the tough part. I spent immense amounts of time and effort on this mask. It began as a wireframe, though in an effort to keep weight down I put as few wires in as I could to serve as guidelines. Next I took plastic mesh and attached it to the wireframe with a combination of hot glue and hand-sewing through the mesh holes. The muzzle, being largely flat planes, was easier than the forehead/eye area. Pictures of the plastic mesh mask are available below. Freya actually has a rather small head, and getting the width of a human face down to a narrow muzzle without looking strange was kind of difficult. ^^;; The result is that her muzzle is actually a tad too long, but it's too late to change it now. ;P

The eyes were originally teardrop-shaped plastic shapes that I got from Jo-Ann's Fabrics; a friend with a dremel tool cut away the excess plastic for me, and then I set them into the plastic mesh with a liberal application of hot glue. (Now that I have seen what a dremel tool can do, I must get one for myself...) I painted the insides of the eyes with plain old acrylic paint, leaving the "pupils" unpainted so I could see through them. Sewn to the plastic mesh arund the eyes on the inside is two layers of black pantyhose, to make the pupils appear opaque black from the outside yet still allow me to see (sort of anyway. I can navigate, at least. ;P). The mask has three straps hand-sewn to the plastic mesh to hold it on; one over the top of my head and one on each side. They all velcro together in the back. The straps are just made out of muslin, but they are hemmed. ;) Once all that was done, I could start applying the fur.



The fur is all hand-sewn on through the plastic mesh, except in places where that was impossible, such as around the eyes where there's too much solid plastic and glue. Some of the seams in the plastic mesh I could avoid with the more pliant fur; sadly, though, there are still a lot of seams, and most of them show more than I would like. ^^;; Long fur would have been much better for hiding seams, but ah well. Cutting out holes for the eyes was interesting, but tougher was getting the fur around my neck to lie right. Luckily the cravat mostly holds it in place. There is a computer fan in the nose of the mask, wired to a battery pack worn on a belt under the coat and an on/off switch held at my wrist for easy access. It still wasn't really enough to keep me cool, so I also rigged up a bag to wear around my neck out of a terrycloth washcloth and a strip of muslin. It fits under the coat and holds a cold pack against my chest, without showing through the costume.

The Cravat:
This was easy; I didn't even need a pattern, I just made a mockup and then the real thing. The neckband is a long rectangle that closes in the front with velcro. (The fur also closes with velcro at the front of my neck, thus allowing me to merely open the neck of the costume and push the mask up a bit should I need a drink.) The front is another rectangle, gathered at the top and sewn to the first, and the pleats are ironed in. The cravat is made of Casa Satin; again, the only thing I could find that was the right color and stiff enough to hold the pleats with just ironing. ;P

The Spear:
I didn't bother making a spear for Fanime since their weapons rules prohibited prop weapons of any type, but I enjoyed the costume so much I was determined to wear it again, preferably with a spear. ;) The shaft is a length of PVC piping. The "rings" around the shaft are made of wooden rings and/or cylinders with celluclay added for roundness. The base started with a circle of foamcore glued onto the PVC, then I added wire mesh and celluclay on top of that. The lower blades are foamcore. The space between them was covered with tape, but that wouldn't take paint so I had to glue paper on top of the tape, around all those annoying curved surfaces. Then I laid tagboard over the foamcore to hide all the tape and paper and glue, and painted it. The top blades have a single sheet of foamcore inside, carefully carved along the edges to bevel them outward. Then I took pieces of tagboard and glued them onto the foamcore edges, bending them in such a way that they would curve and provide a three-dimensional look. The top blades are attached to the spear shaft by a cylinder of tagboard hot-glued solidly to the foamcore sheet, and carefully sized so it fits perfectly inside the PVC. I used Accent metallic paints to paint darn near the whole thing, and used several variants; for example, the gold for the spear shaft is different than the gold ornamentation on the blades, because they looked like different colors to me in the reference picture. Yes, once again I am an obsessive accuracy freak. ^^;; I'm just glad I stocked up on every possible color of that paint...

Well, I think that covers it... Oh yeah, the wig was storebought, and I didn't even need to style it. The eyelashes were store-bought as well. Okay, now I think I'm done. ;) Anyway, I love this costume, despite what a challenge it was to make, and I hope this rambling wasn't too boring to anyone who was curious about how the costume was made... ;)