Showing posts with label tekkou. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tekkou. Show all posts

May 21, 2015

Making Kojirou's not-so-identical tekkou!

Hello everyone, how's it going? :)

During the final days of April I went to buy some fabric to make Kojirou's tekkou, aka hand guards. I had luck with me this time and Eurokangas had everything that I needed – black fake leather, dark brown fake leather and golden bias tape!

Fabrics!
Now you're probably thinking something along the lines of "what Kojirou?" and that's right, the name is a historical one and he was a famous swordsman living during the Sengoku and early Edo period; he was most known for having battled Musashi Miyamoto. 
Though the Kojirou I'm cosplaying is one from a visual novel and on this one he is a faithful bodyguard of Hana-hime, the main heroine.


I was studying my limited references and after staring at them long enough it became clear to me that his tekkou were slightly different on each arm, for some reason. At first I had thought that it was just inconsistent references being at it again (as always), but, after some closer inspection I did notice that they were indeed different. Wut.
Oh well ~

I jumped over to the textile/hand-working class in school to make these because hey, my apartment is way too small for a sewing machine... and I don't even have one anyway.
The first lesson I had at 29th April and what I did first was draft my base pattern with the help of a tekkou I already had saved me some trouble. I then did some modifications on the pattern and –when it seemed like it might even turn into something that works– I made a quick prototype out of fabric scraps to check the fit. It fit!
Sure that it was a bit loose but seeing how it will be made of fake leather (that doesn't stretch) and there will be a folded kimono sleeve and wrappings under, I, well, thought it better to make it a bit more roomy.
With the prototype working I cut out the parts from the black leather.. and that was when I noticed my first problem – I had miscalculated the width of the tekkou and thus I was a few centimeters short. Oh well, nothing much to do than cut it out anyway and pray that the few centimeters weren't a deal-breaker.

After having cut out the leather pieces I sewed on the golden bias tape around the edges. Of course this was a troublesome episode I had to rip up my stitches and redo three times, always because it didn't attach on the opposite side. Blargh! 
I have a love-hate relationship with bias tape...

Bias tape, I love sewing you so....... not.
One tekkou bias tape'd, other one still au natural.
Next I added the golden fake leather to make the thicker "rings" around the tekkou's upper half. After that I sewed one of the tekkou shut (aka so it takes the tube form) and then I proceeded to make the brown leather details that are on the lower half of his tekkou.


This is the best picture I found that shows what the hand guards
look like on the underside.
After looking at the references for a short moment I got an idea of how to do them. Let's start!


I started taking some measurements and then drafting out the design on the wrong side of the leather fabric. I then just cut them out and shortened each piece a bit because 35-36 cm in length was a bit too much. When doing the shortenings I accidentally cut one piece too short, or more like, each end wasn't even at one point, even though I swear to God I cut the same off on both sides! After a moment of "what the hell went wrong and where??" I noticed that it wasn't my fault – the person who sold me the fabric had cut horribly non-straight. Urgh. ._. Yep, so I had to redo one of the pieces (the thickest, aka solo one). 
I added bias tape to the needed areas again – this time it went smoothly!

A lot of bias tape sewing later I ended up realizing that I didn't have enough bias tape to finish my stuff – off we go back to the fabric store to buy 60 cm more!

In progress... and out of bias tape, fffuuu.
When I was done with sewing on the bias tape I did the "closing systems" on the underside of the tekkou... yeah, out of bias tape too. I folded it in half, sew a straight stitch on top and then just sew it on at each end; the other end by hand. Oh, and speaking of which, I sacrificed some accuracy on these because if I had put two closing ties on each piece (especially on the double smaller ones) it would have looked too crammed/busy and so on the double pieces I put one tie per piece, instead of two.
After that I did some "attachment spots" by hand-sewing on strategical places so that the brown details will stay on the main body of the tekkou and thus be less of a hassle to put on and wear.

Brown details completed, feat. "closing system" on the underside.
Example of hand-sewn stitch to keep the details in place, at all times.
With that done I was almost finished! The only thing left was to make the little loop for the middle finger (which I made out of some solid fabric scraps) and hand-sew it on. 

Finger loop done!
At this point I tried on the tekkou (it wasn't the first time) and for some reason it took me until now to realize that it was way too wide where my hand came out! Sure that I had made them bigger on purpose so that I can cram parts of the kimono sleeve –wrapped in bandages– under it, but still.
So what do I do? Take it in, of course! And of course because I did this by eye measurement (aka without measuring properly before) I ended up taking in too much at first and then I couldn't even get my hand through the opening... go me. ._. Luckily my oopsie run didn't leave too horrid holes in the leather, so I didn't ruin my almost-finished piece of work, phew.

Tekkou turned inside out, showing the original seam and the "take it in"-seam.
I repeated the process for the second tekkou and made sure not to accidentally sew a straight stitch on the brown detail parts (I had turned the whole thing inside out) because well, his tekkou are not identical and so the detail parts reach higher up on the other glove because there's two layers of them, overlapping slightly. I didn't want to do more silly mistakes and especially not because I had already stayed 30 min overtime in class and thus sacrificed half of my lunch break in school...

And now my tekkou are finished! o/



That's all for this post! Shiro Samurai out! :'D

May 30, 2012

Ichito cosplay tekkou pt.3

I finished my tekkou today. Let's cut right to the chase!

So the push-button fastening method didn't work in my taste so I had to cut yet another tekkou, boy I've screwed up two now... oh well, this time it went well so it's ok, practice makes perfect.

I won't show you again the first steps of tekkou making because those have been described in part 1 and 2 already. But after I had cut out and decoration stitched around a new tekkou and folded in the sides I went and got the leather fabric again and drew two 50 cm long and 2,5 cm wide ties on the wrong side of the fabric with an ink pen. I made sure to check that the fabric stretched horizontally so that the ties would stretch a bit if needed. I used one tie per tekkou.

I've drawn out the ties...
Cut them out
After that I just made a middle fold on both the tekkou and on the middle of the ties and sewed them on. I just made a single straight vertical seam on the middle of the tie.

Testing it on.. ties are just wrapped around once and tucked under
No retarded side buttons hihi
And they overlap closer to the middle, yay! (I didn't bother to get them to be aligned lol)
Now there was only left to do that finger ring thingy. Mom earlier got the idea that I could use two of those curtain ring hanger thingies if I just removed that hanging clip part. Easily done.

Former curtain rings, they'll soon get a new more exciting use ~
I made a small loop for the rings to go through and hand-sewed it to the underside of the tekkou. Machine sewing won't work for obvious reasons...

Hand-sew to and fro for strength
After that I was pretty much finished. Yay, no more errors! I'm glad my "use ties to fasten" idea worked as well as it did, when I do it my way it doesn't derp ~ *coughyeahrightcough* Well, not always as this proved! D:

Finished product (sorry it bunches, it does that if I move my hand certain angles)
Under arm <3
Finished tekkou, front and back side
Hmm... what's next? Probably make the blue kimono ~

May 29, 2012

Ichito cosplay tekkou pt.2

 Hi guys!

More tekkou progress today... but it didn't quite work as planned...
Remember when I mentioned the leather got some fugly marks from the sewing machine?

Look to the right and you'll see scratch marks... they are more visible in real life
Sewing derp or something too...
Well, they bothered me enough for me to make a new one...

Just finished tracing the form on the wrong side of the fake leather...
 And then I just cut it out, sewed a decoration stitch around the edges and then, to prevent fugly marks from the sewing machine, I used that "paper underneath" trick mom told me yesterday. You just put the paper (thin) under the leather so that the leather's right side is against the paper and you're sewing on the wrong side. I had to sew on the wrong side because I folded in the sides a bit.

Paper trick.. I'm just ripping it off, works like a dream
Sides folded in
And then mom attached push-buttons to those folded sides (folded them for strength) and I ended up with something that looked like this:

Looks good right? Right?
But when I tried it on I noticed it was loose enough to almost fall off my arm, even when the push-buttons were closed. Eh. Besides when I got it to look nice on one side of my hand it derped on another... Here's photo examples seen from different sides with tekkou sitting properly (first pic) and what it looks like seen from other angles without me trying to fix the fit at all:

Normal angle comment: "Seems okay"
Under arm angle: "lolwut"
Side angle: "Eww I'd rather have the fasteners on the middle of the under arm..."
So yeah, not quite satisfied with it. Luckily I only did one tekkou so the other one is still at that "side folded in" stage. I'm considering dropping the push-button idea and attaching some ties to keep it shut instead.. like it seems tekkou originally had, if I'm not outside biking.

 Something like this:

(photo found on Google)
Oh well, next time I need to cut out yet a new one and then try the ties method.. hopefully it won't derp as much.

Bye.

Ichito cosplay tekkou pt.1

 Hi guys!

Sorry this post is actually from 28th May, I didn't have time to write it earlier so now I'm writing it in the middle of the night.
While I was working on Ichito's 'flap' I was actually working on his handguards, tekkou, also.

Kind of shows his tekkou... and how he likes to threat killing people right and left..
 Earlier during the same day I had googled around for some information about tekkou and I had found this Youtube video that gave me some kind of ideas of what to do.


And then I also found this nice little helpful picture:

(found in Google)
So filled with a basic idea of what to do I went and got the roll of pattern paper and started drawing a tekkou pattern. My first prototype turned out to be a fail so I did another one. I kept tweaking and changing it forever until it finally had a not-completely-retarded fit.

The pattern I ended up using (own measurements)
Then it was just to go get that brown leather fabric we had at home and cut out two pieces. Good thing with leather is that you don't need to do a shit to it. XD It doesn't fray.

Cut out pieces (they are darker in reality)
I wanted to do a seam around the edges for decoration... (sorry dark photo)
Mom suggested using push-buttons for fastening. I found that a better option than velcro.. I don't really know why but I don't really like velcro...

When I tried to continue sewing in 2 centimeter of the sides on one of the tekkous (to strengthen the push-button and to get a better fit) I noticed the sewing machine left those ugly markings again on the surface... ugh. So mom came with the idea to use pattern paper under the leather. It worked perfectly and the paper was easy to rip away afterwards. But. When I was sewing the sewing machine suddenly decided to be an ass and quit. It started sounding weird and gave warning signs and then it made this huge tangled bobbin thread mess that got half-way stuck inside the machine. Great. Needless to say no more sewing after that.. I hope I can continue tomorrow.

That's all, bye!