Stein

I will go back and add more photos later! I misplaced a lot of my photos while reorganizing my laptop but I didn't want to delay getting a few blog posts completed. There may be more photos on my instagram!

Here’s a short breakdown of how I made my cosplay for Stein from Soul Eater. He's such a cool looking character and this was a lot of fun to make. This is not a super in-depth tutorial and assumes you have some prior sewing knowledge but if anyone wants a more detailed explanation of anything feel free to ask!

I intended for this to be super quick and easy because I thought I’d be able to alter store-bought clothes and reuse an old wig but that absolutely did not happen. I got a lot of questions at Holmat about whether I made the shirt myself, but I made the lab coat as well! An Okabe Rintaro cosplayer offered to lend me his lab coat and I’d just add the decorative stitching, but I decided I didn’t want to do a lot of work just to undo it after the con. Plan B was to order a lab coat online and alter it but it never arrived. So I took apart the borrowed lab coat and traced all the pieces onto separate fabric. I left a little extra seam allowances on the parts that would be cut apart and stitched back together. The collar area was so difficult to get it to sit right, since I had to make it a slightly different shape than the original lab coat I was basically guessing at what shape everything needed to be. I assembled it normally and made sure it fit well before cutting it apart again and adding the stitching. I spent a lot of time looking at how other cosplayers did this part and decided I’d like how it looks the most if I used thick yarn instead of drawing it on or using pieces of fabric. I also noticed that most people use black but it looks dark grey to me, at least in the specific reference pictures I was looking at. In the knitting section of craft stores you can find blunt needles with extra-large eyes specifically for sewing yarn. I finished this over the course of one lunch break and it was really relaxing.

The shirt might be my favorite thing I made last year, it just looks so cool. The light grey fabric is so soft and I really wish I’d bought enough of it to make a sweater or something. The dark grey fabric was harvested from a t-shirt and dyed to be more of a purpley-red color ( I did re-sew the tag from the tshirt onto the back because I kept forgetting which side was supposed to be the front lol). I actually used the top half of the same sewing pattern I used for Crona, just with the sleeves cut shorter. I traced it onto different pattern paper so I could mark out where each section of fabric goes. Before I added the black stitching, it was a little itchy where the seam allowance was inside the shirt where the two different fabrics meet so I used the yarn to kind of hold everything in a folded down position if that makes sense and that completely solved the problem.

The pants are just my regular jeans. I had neither the time nor budget nor energy to sew a pair of plain black pants when I have 4 of those in my closet already.

One half of the screw is styrofoam carved into shape and the other half is a paper towel tube with the ends covered in cardboard. I attached magnets to each piece and to my wig so I’d be able to take the screw on and off easily.

The scythe could definitely be better. It’s all posterboard and PVC pipe and it just wasn’t stable enough. The glue that was supposed to hold everything together just didn’t dry and honestly I have no idea why. Also, even though I did practice carrying it around it was difficult to maneuver in crowded areas of the con and I was constantly worried I’d hit somebody. It held up ok for most of the con but then suddenly fell apart as we were trying to take some photos before we left. As we were walking back to the car it fell apart a second time and the blade piece fell over the edge of the railing from the second floor. I’m just glad that even though it was completely destroyed, the way it happened was at least really funny.