Learn from failures for Galaxia's shoulder armor

You don't become a professional in one night. Even with my 15 years of sewing/cosplay experience, I still mess up. It's a learning experience. Taking a break from working on the main body for Sailor Galaxia's outfit, I decided I would start on the shoulder plate armor things. To begin, I started off by drafting out a pattern. I sketched out a single piece until I was happy with its size and shape. To get a better idea of how this will look on my shoulder (and also a good way to make sure the shape and size is just as I want it), I duplicated that piece multiple times on a larger paper. Then I cut out the piece (whole) and held it up onto my shoulder. I thought it looked good on the first try so I left it! (sorry for the crappy photo, took a quick snap shot on my phone).

Awesome! Now I've got my pattern made up! Time to transfer it to your choice of material! In the anime, you never see these pieces bend or flap about like fabric does. So I decided to go with something a bit more sturdy. You can choose to make these pieces out of worbla and spray paint them instead of the method I'm choosing. I chose to cover something in fabric versus spray painting them so my whole outfit would match. It's up to you though. Spray painting would be so much easier in the long run...so if you don't care about matching pieces. Go for it! You can use anything from cardboard (cereal boxes are the best since they are thin and sturdy!), poster board, foam core boards, etc. as a core for this.

I came up with multiple methods to try out. As mentioned above, I thought about making them out of foam or worbla and spray painting them. It's so tempting since it would save so much time! But her outfit seems to be made of the same material. Therefore, I went with covering it with fabric.

From there, I thought about sewing the pieces then inserting the board. It didn't end well since I can't fully sew the piece close because it tapers smaller on the end that would be left open to insert the board. I attempted to sew just the larger area and then glue down the open part but that didn't go well either. It ended up looking bulky and not neat. Not to mention the weird bump that happened at the point where the sewing stopped.

My next attempt was to use spray adhesive and wrap fabric around the board. Seems simple enough, right? Nope. I started off with spraying both sides of the board, then carefully laying it on the fabric. Then I folded over just a bit of the one side...here's where it got tricky. I can't just fold over the other side and be done since there is a point on the end. How do I make the top look just as nice as the other sides?? First I tried folding over the side, cutting a V into it so I can fold over the top edges nicely. That didn't work (didn't like the bulk along the side of it). So then I tried it again only not folding over the one side and just cutting it close to the edge. I figure that since I'll be sewing them all together anyway, it would be fine. Nope, that didn't work either. Plus after realizing that you might see the underside of the pointy ends, I really didn't like how that looked. I kept messing and fussing with it until I got something that I remotely like. I made enough screw up pieces to make a whole shoulder piece. Haha. You can see a few photos of the messed up ones below.

 

A few tips (and warnings) when using spray adhesive:

• Do light coats
• Give it a few seconds to become sticky before placing on fabric
• If you press to hard, the glue with seep through the fabric (and look awful!)
• Don't spray in the same spot over and over, even if it feels dry, you will pull off residue on the next piece!
• Cover your area with something you don't care about! Spray adhesive sticks to everything and wont come out of fabrics, carpets, or rugs. So be careful!

Once you get all the pieces cover, you need to attach them together and onto the outfit. I personally hand sewed each piece completely together at the sides (picture below). So no matter how my arm moves, it'll stay together in once piece. If you don't mind them flapping about separately, then you can attach it to the suit directly. You'll notice that I left extra fabric hanging off the ends. This gives me room to sew the pieces onto the suit. I'm not 100% sure if I will sew it directly on or if I want to attach it via another method. If I ever want to wash the outfit, I wouldn't be able to put the skirt and shoulder pieces in the wash with it. So making them detachable would be nice.

In the long run, it is the underside of the pieces. So not many (if any) are going to see it. I'm a perfectionist and really like to get everything to look perfect. I may come back and redo these pieces if I ever come up with a better idea. But for now, this is how it is. It works and doesn't look like crap!

~Serenity