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The Satine build was something else. It took longer than expected, and there were several times where I thought “one solid weekend and we will be done.” Famous last words. I’d get a good portion complete and then hit a wall where I would have to: research something, order a different supply, reconstruct something or just stare confused at what just happened. There are not a ton of good resources for this character when it comes to building this cosplay or at least building it to my standards (which is probably more finicky than it needs to be) but I learned a lot, reinforced some skills and made myself think about fabric in a more gravity defying way. I love things like that. While it was hard at times, looking back, I wouldn’t change anything.
Now, normally I don’t care about the rules but I really wanted to join the Star Wars Costuming Clubs with this costume so I could wear it more often than just at conventions. Here is the link to the Rebel legion Costume Reference Library (CRL) if you are interested in the exact rules and parameters.
WHY I CHOSE THIS COSPLAY
Design: How Did I Design This and Why I Designed It the Way It Is
DRESS OVERVIEW
I went into this build knowing a few requirements and parameters:
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It was going to be layers. Each color needed to be its own layer, these layers would also serve to create the correct silhouette.
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I wanted the blue side-petal pieces to be springy and therefore hold up against all manner of dings and bumps.I design costumes, not just for competition, but also to be worn in the halls and elevators of cons (and sometimes parades), and it has to hold up.
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The same forces that affected the petals would affect the hem but add to that the physics of walking (the kicking motion). Most of the other Satines I have seen with the shape I want, have wires in the hem. Wires, however, can get bent out of shape easily, and I didn’t want to have to reshape it every 10 minutes. Now there is a piece of metal in the front most section but we will get to that.
Purple Leotard
I know going in that this was going to be the easiest part of the build so I savored it.
This layer is made of a lilac stretch. Having a stretchy base-layer made it easier to construct the other parts that need to match the base-layer. By covering these pieces in the same fabric I don’t have to match paint that could also dry a different shade or worry about a piece being a different color because it is a different material.
I always make my base layer a leotard, I find it gives a smooth base for the other layers and I don’t have to worry about pulling down a shirt hem under all those layers, or twisting when I need to pull things around while getting dressed, like the skirt. My leotard pattern is self-drafted. It has a neckline that I can step into for ease of getting dressed while fueled only by caffeine, adrenaline and hope.
Satine is animated, and everything about her is elongated. I, as an actual human, then have to create optical illusions to trick your visual cortex into elongating my proportions. The first of those illusions is in the construction of the base layer where I added about a half inch to the neckline. This gave me more room to add stripes to the neckband while not raising the top edge of the mock turtleneck too high. This provides enough space for the strip of blue and tan, and makes my neck look longer. (I used this same idea on my Alastor’s leotard shirt. Link here) The second illusion is that the neck piece is more curved than it looks. To create a straight line on a body, you have to curve it, because bodies curve. If that seam was actually straight, it would pull weirdly down and be uncomfortable.
If you have never added a zipper to stretch fabric, it’s easier than it might seem. Add interfacing to stabilize where you are placing the zipper.
I finished it all off at the crotch with strips around the leg holes I just used strips of the same fabric, and 3 snaps. There is really no way to go to the bathroom in this cosplay for multiple reasons but if I needed to I could.
Bracers
I was worried about this. Her forearms look like she has a wrapping around her bracers…that perhaps holds the bracers in place? In the end, it came together pretty quickly. Part of what helped was I used the same stretchy fabric as a covering for the bracers that I had used for the leotard.
The bracers have 3 parts: the actual bracers-made of a 2mm thick piece of foam; the straps that wrap around the bracers–made of a 7 inch wide strip of fabric with pintucks; and 2 pieces of the lilac fabric sewn together to make a long purple pocket.
Fun Fact! You can sew through foam. I used this technique to sew the foam inside the long purple pockets to create structure where it would otherwise be floppy. Foam bends where interfacing would create a permanent fold. To sew with foam, make your stitch length is longer. Trust me.
AT THIS POINT if you are going to airbrush these pieces do it now! LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES. Air brush before attaching the pin-tucked fabric. I air-brushed them after it was completely made and realized the paint wasn’t getting to the pleated areas, and so I had to take it all apart and start again. I even needed to re-make parts. Don’t be me.
After that, I sewed the tubes to the foam and fabric bracers. They just slip over my hands and cover the bottom part of the leotard sleeve. I didn’t finish the sleeve hems because I didn’t want to add bulk and the stretch was not going to fray. I have seen many people just attach the bracers to the sleeves but I like the sleeves and the bracers being different pieces so I can wash the leotard if necessary and not have to worry or seam rip them off to then sew them back when it is clean, I will forget.
TEAL TOP
To make the closure situation easier I made these parts into two separate pieces: a jacket and a skirt. This also meant I don’t have to wrestle with structured fabric through the neck on my sewing machine when finishing.
The jacket could close in the front with hooks making a nice point, while the skirt could close in the back, making it easier to get into or out of if needed. When we get to the light blue parts it will help there as well.
Work smarter not harder.
The jacket was not that bad, I used my sloper to make the pattern. The only thing I needed to alter was the neck line adding a built in standing collar (add picture of pattern of standing collar) and shaving down the center front. I faced it all with the same fabric and added a twill tape at the waist since it was going to be 2 layers deep when it was worn and I didn’t want to add the bulk of a fabric waist band. The sleeves were another story.
I started with my sleeve sloper, it has a built-in underarm gusset so I can raise my arm without affecting how the body of the garment is sitting. It is a normal sleeve from the shoulder to the elbow, but you want me to talk about those petal structures, those were tricky. I didn’t really want a straight seam attachment point because there are no straight lines in the whole build and that is where your eye goes first.
I decided in the beginning to work with a Armorer (an expert in Mandalorian armor and costumes and judge for a Star Wars costuming club) who I knew could sew really well (in Mando costume clubs sewing is not common or required) I collaborated with them and we decided there was a crazy seam at the elbow (attach picture here of seam). This will also help open up the petals. I don’t think I need to tell you that the forearm is a cylinder. Any fabric you are dropping from the forearm is going to want to curve to conform to the cylinder from which it came from. There are two ways to stop this
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Use a very small connection point. That is not going to work in this case.
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Add darts or folds to make the fabric thicker and heavier in some sections and force the fabric to open.
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Cut your fabric on the bias so the fabric has the chance to fall straight vs with the grain where it has no choice but to curve with the weave.
I first decided to put a seam around the elbow joint. It let me switch from being on grain ( the biceps part of the sleeve) to bias ( the petal part of the sleeve). This will get camouflaged by the folds that naturally occur at the elbow, knees and joints that bend. The seam also lets me add fabric inside the petals that stiffen them up and allow them to hold weight. But the real star is bias and since this concept will come back again in the skirt and it might get a little complicated.
I know this will shock no one but woven fabric is woven in a grid pattern. The edges are called salvage and that is the strongest woven structure. On the opposite side of the spectrum is the bias which has the least integrity and can be kind of stretchy. HOW AND WHY IS IMPORTANT TO THIS BUILD. The woven structure is always a square because of how the warp and weft are placed on the loom.
Deep breath and follow along with me as we talk about my favorite part of fabric… physics. When hanging with grain or cross grain the force (in this case gravity) is being distributed along the downward directional fiber and it is distributed evenly across the fiber from top to bottom.
When you are cutting and hanging things on the bias you are turning those nice, neat squares into diamonds. The force is now getting transferred into open space which force hates, so the force will try and get those fibers back into a straight line by pulling them down. ( picture of cut on grain vs. bias)
Did I lose anyone… good, now the easy part. If I were to cut a diamond shape (the base of the sleeve petals) or a quadrilateral (the base of the skirt) on the grain, the fibers will stay in place and fall straight down. If this happens on a curve like the forearms and legs the points to either side of the shape will curve with the underlying structure. If I cut those same shapes on the bias we are using the holes in the weave more than the weave itself and force kicks in, pushing the fibers down to the center of the shape to distribute the force more evenly ( image) . This will make those tips try and fall straighter and not curve in. NOW they will not get to fully straight down, but they will get close.
This “close but not quite” is why on the skirt the slits are not going to work but we are not there yet. Let's get back to the sleeve and those petals.
These petals are made of 4 layers, from back to front it looks like ( insert picture) outer layer, interfacing fused to that, canvas, and inner layer. Let's get the interfacing out of the way first because it doesn't do much, the outer layer is interfaced so the outline of the cotter pins are not visible on the backside. Now for the inside of this fabric petal pocket. The canvas is actually holding the weight of those drops.
I made a mechanical rendering of how I wanted those drops to be (drawing there) and my partner modeled it for me, they are 2 pieces. One is the drop itself and the other is used to make a mold to cast the gem inside, that is later in this paper. Once I finished them I painted and screwed in 2 TINY eyelets per drop to prevent them from rotating and added a tiny dab of super glue, then attached a little piece of Velcro to the back, for extra security (overkill? Maybe but I don’t trust glue). I sewed the other side of the Velcro to the inner sleeve. Little pro sewing tip, put the hook side of the Velcro facing out, as this is the side of the Velcro that can eat through fabric if the two pieces are not placed perfectly. The soft part will not hurt the fabric at all no matter how much it rubs. I took an awl and poked a hole through the inner fabric and canvas layers, I inserted the cotter pins and sewed the lining and the canvas to the seam at the elbow. There will be a part about the resin cast piece but I think we have had enough mental gymnastics for one section, go get a cookie, drink some water and then meet me back here for the skirt.
TEAL SKIRT
Just like the top, the base section is a straight forward pattern, a pencil skirt. The front-most piece has the trumpet shape built in already because there can’t be a seam running through it, but the top of that piece is just a pencil skirt. I took my sloper and whipped up a quick pencil skirt pattern making sure to finish it at the knees. Now don’t freak out, the seam on the side and the back piece will be covered by the blue over skirt. Whatever quadrilateral you use for the skirt you need to attach it to the front piece so the fullness at the bottom is the same in each piece. The front most section needs to be cut on the straight of grain which means the fullness at the bottom is on straight of grain, but all the other bottom pieces should be cut on the bias so the fullness you added stays to the center of the piece and does not collapse into the leg space.
The fabric still needs something to push off of to maintain those arches, and while there are probably ways to keep the arches and slits in the skirt (more like a pannier with a piece of fabric on the back side, picture here) it would not move the way I wanted it to or how it moves in the show. This is where purposeful choices are important, and figuring out what is the most important thing to you comes to the fore. To me it was the silhouette and movement so those slits had to go. To help the skirt arches I put a very thin corded fabric inside, also cut on the bias just to hold it up and give it some nice structure. The fabric still wants to fall in waves so I needed something at the very bottom to smooth it out. Now we are going back to physics for a second, this should be easier and provide more reasons why those slits are not possible with the shape, and trust me I tried- for about a month
One thing to think about is that a lot of stiffeners are not meant to stiffen in an arch. Webbing wants to be straight, horse hair wants to be straight, it arches when there are restrictions put on it but it wants to lay flat. Interfacing wants to be straight. All these only curve with restrictions placed on them like a seam. But all of these added stiffeners add weight and force ( back to gravity) works on all parts equally so the piece will want to drop straight down. The center of the quadrilateral shape of the skirt is being held down by the top whereas the edges are not and there is nothing holding them in place, so they will want to swing inward and fall into the space where the legs are.
Taking out the slits is the only way this will not happen (I was asked about magnets at one point but that adds a timing scenario I don’t really care to think about). The front piece has to be on the grain, because unlike the other trapezoid shapes, the base of this trapezoid should curve inward. This will hide the fact that there are no slits, and deepen the folds on each side of the front panel.
I needed something metal that was rigid enough not to be easily kicked out of shape but could hold an acute angle on its own (almost bent in half). In the front piece…. Drumroll please… There is a flat steel hoop bone
inserted between all the layers (I think mine is between the horse hair and the innermost fabric) so if you are keeping track there is the outer fabric cut on the bias, the thin corded fabric cut on the bias, 3 inch horse hair, a bone and a lining. Before closing everything up remember to cap these metal pieces well because the raw metal can be sharp and eat though the fabric, creating holes and scratching up your legs real good.
As part of the construction of the skirt, prior to assembling everything, I made a stencil and painted the design around the hem. I thought about either applying it in paint or embroidering it but I didn’t think the texture that embroidery would leave made sense with the overall look I was going for.
BLUE OVERCOAT
Let's start out with this, because I get this question a lot. I dyed the fabric I used for this part. I really wanted a fabric with a pattern small enough to be texture and not anything repetitive or recognizable, I have no clue where I got it but odds are it is from the dead stock fabric store in town because that is where most of my fabric comes from. It was white, the texture comes from the Jacquard weave of the fabric and the different weaves give the illusion of a different shade.
I am going to break this description up into the top and the bottom like I did with the teal piece but after I built both pieces I sewed them together so it is one piece now.
When preparing the patterns for the blue top we ran into the stereotypical animation-to-real-life problem, which is WHERE DO THE SEAMS GO? It could have been a dart BUT that would have made the front piece very large because I didn’t want a shoulder seam to attach the bib to. I wanted one smooth piece from front to bib back. The easiest way to do that was to just move the side seam to the side of my chest instead of the seam running up the fullness of the chest. The back I really didn’t care about because it was going to be covered with that bib and the leather “ belt”( image of the back). I did interface the shoulders because this fabric has a very loose structure and it ends farther out than where the shoulder stops, but there was nothing crazy about the top. Which is good, it counterbalances the bottom petal parts, so lets get into those parts.
This is one of those rare times when the illustrators/ animators helped out by putting seams in that helped the shape and made sense because to make that shape you actually need petal shapes and all you need to do is get the right proportions on the little filler triangles at the bottom. These only help with the shape, they are not the only thing holding all this up.
This fabric was very loosely woven and easy to move out of shape so the whole thing had to be lightly interfaced but the skirt petals were interfaced with felt interfacing. The instinct on a shape like this is to use the stiffest fabric you have but, like with my Alastor cosplay, the more important part is to make every piece more light weight than stiff. If the piece is too heavy you can put all the interfacing you want in there, but nothing can defy gravity. I also chose a lining which had a good amount of its own stiffening qualities so I didn’t need to interface that. The key to this is… you guessed it, horse hair.
Remember the second parameter to this build? It might get crushed accidentally so no wires could be used and while boning might work they want to be straight when there are no parameters put on them. The under structure should support the existing shape enhancing it not force the fabric into a shape that it was not cut for. The felt not only added stability and strength, but gave me a place to sew a horse hair net into it along with sewing all the seam allowances down which added a little bit more stiffening but neither is strong enough on its own.
Remember the second parameter to this build? It might get crushed accidentally so no wires could be used and while boning might work they want to be straight when there are no parameters put on them. The under structure should support the existing shape enhancing it not force the fabric into a shape that it was not cut for. The felt not only added stability and strength, but gave me a place to sew a horse hair net into it along with sewing all the seam allowances down which added a little bit more stiffening but neither is strong enough on its own.
In the end I did have to go in and make the lining smaller and get rid of all that extra fabric. Originally I made it the same size using the same pattern but like a circle inside a circle the lining has less surface area to cover then the outer fabric so I needed to take a few little tucks so it would sit nicely inside the shells of the outer fabric and not roll outward. Putting a long stitch catching that felt layer definitely helps as well.
The back panel is also an illusion, it is just a flat piece with tucks sewn in to give the appearance of seams. The original was pieced together but it was doing odd things and ended up looking wavy, so I thought why reinvent the wheel and make it flat to begin with. The side pieces have all the structure thank goodness or I would not have the ability to sit down
LIGHT BLUE FABRIC UNDER PETALS AND DETAILS
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I am not sure what to call these inside petals but they are a little more complex than they look at first glance. I ended up making them 3 times, so while I want to jump in and say “IT HAS POCKETS” we can’t start there.
These pieces also start off life as a pencil skirt, but just the front piece so I manipulated my sloper back into this configuration with no seam in Center Front, to give myself a little more wiggle room. The 2nd time I made these pieces they were just curved and would swing the “tassels” (What the CRL calls them, I call them seed pods) into the folds of the teal skirt.
There were a few things I could do
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Alter the waist shape, tipping the whole piece forward (cutting some fabric off the center front.
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Make the darts longer so the flair of my hips doesn’t affect the Center Front as much
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Finally just cut them straighter ( ironically this did not help in this case)
After doing these things it was still not falling quite right but was close. Then I realized I did not take into consideration the flair at the bottom of the skirt was going to make the bottom even wider so option 4:
4)Create a dart in the center front that runs horizontally to get rid of some of the extra fabric and swing the tips closer to Center Front and therefore get them falling straight.
before
alteration
after
alteration
For the final try with these pieces, I decided to attach them to the teal skirt with a swing tack which would help hold this in place better. Sometimes when building something like this you need to think of how the pieces move in relation to the others, does it work more like the coat or like the skirt? If they worked like a coat, I would attach them to the blue overcoat, but because they behaved more like the skirt, I attached them to the skirt.
For example I wore this to the Renaissance Fair as a test of how it worked and if I can put this on without a full dressing area because sometimes at events you don’t get the luxury of even a mirror. I lost a tassel (seed pod) and a bunch of shells. Thankfully we fixed that and made extra, which you will see later in the section but I also think just the swinging motion of walking might have just been too much. When these light blue petals were attached to the dark blue coat, the only secure point was at the waist because of how I got into the coat. They could get some GREAT MOMENTUM in all sorts of directions. By attaching the light blue petals to the skirt I could have way more control of the momentum generated by walking. I could sew them all the way down if I needed to. This, along with the new attachment method should make those pieces less likely to fly off in all different directions.
Now for the moment you have been waiting for, those things at the bottom what are they… who knows. The costume standard calls them tassels (all of them). I call them seed pods and shells and will from now on, but your guess is as good as mine. I can tell you that the seed pods are made from gently sanding pink insulation foam. Once that was done I inserted a wire with glue in it and covered it with XTC-3D sandable resin, painted it to accentuate the valleys but 2 more coats of XTC-3D and then covered it in matte clear nail polish because it was SHINY.
The shells were a little harder, whereas before I had made a mechanical drawing it would just not work for this so I made a little example in foam to show my husband what I needed him to model. It is a complex shape and we did need a little outside help, but eventually we got the shape I was looking for and all we needed to do was print in different sizes in resin. This made the hole for the wire too small but I just drilled it out by hand (because I was afraid of breaking it). This chipped the resin a little but that was to be expected. I threaded everything up with some “black pearls” of different sizes.
Originally I sewed these pieces on, right on the seam with very thick thread but that didn’t stop me from losing pieces so in this iteration I sewed a jump ring to the back of the light blue petals LIKE HARD and then bent the wire into that. I don’t want to jinx myself but so far so good.
With that we have come to the end of the dress portion of this build, and the sewing was done… AKA the part I new the most about was over, now I needed to attempt probably the hardest part of this build and the most expensive (respectively)
LEATHER CORSET
The leather corset was probably the one part that, looking back, I shouldn’t have worried about. I had done some leather in the past, my first leather project was probably not the best one in terms of complexity but it made this project look like a cake walk.
Once I draped out my pattern on my dressform with paper (and found some other great designs along the way that I might have to use to make another leather corset all I needed to do was sew the 2 together(yes this is only 2 pieces together and the base was done). I reinforced the stitches with another piece of 2 oz leather on the back. The hardest part was probably sewing the curves together because the curves are in two different directions and it is made out of 10oz leather which is not the most flexible, it is probably overkill but it worked great.
To finish the edges of the corset I used that 2oz leather and sewed that down and then rolled it to cover the stitches and glued it to the back because- say it with me now… I don’t trust glue. But this left me with a really great clean edge. I could have just wet the leather and rolled the edges down but I thought it would look a little too “natural” for such an almost geometric-style cosplay.
This will come back more on the headdress, but out there is a 3D file of random pieces of Satine's costume. While I didn’t use the file straight I did take pieces as reference, the tummy plate was one of those pieces I printed it in resin and used that as a rubbing. Once I rubbed the pattern onto a piece of paper I edited the design, making things fit better and in some parts less complicated. It got scanned into Lightburn to laser burn the design into another piece of 10oz leather, and that piece was glued to the main corset, with the inset tummy stone sandwiched in between. The ray gems are backed with white fabric and inset into the corset.
At this point I painted or dyed depending on the color and ensembles, because the leather is so thick no bones are needed just grommets to lace the whole thing together. There was no way this piece was going to close seamlessly in the way I wanted.
There are tons of tutorials about resin casting gems so I don’t think I need to go into much detail but I did get questions about the effect in the gems. I only found one person doing this technique on YouTube, thank you to Daniel Cooper( YOUTUBE CHANNEL LINK) for that. Mine is not as complex as his because mine are not as deep as his but the key, no matter what, is mylar. I just sprinkled it on the back before the resin sets. The closer the mylar gets to the surface the less dispersed the light and the less opal like it becomes.
In the tutorial Mr. Cooper used sandpaper to fog up the surface of the gem, because I wanted the matte quality to be the same over gems of very different sizes. I chose to use the matte nail polish to fog everything equally and not worry about a rogue piece of sandpaper leaving a long deep scratch.
THE WIG AND HEADDRESS
I am not great with wigs, this wig almost killed me. To keep me from chucking this out a window several times I did it in sections. I took at least 2 or 3 long breaks that lasted a month or two. I even started completely over once, buying a completely new wig for the base.
I started by making a hard cap out of WonderFlex, everything is attached to this piece.
Attached to this cap is a head band shape piece made out of wire, I took a detour with the wire and created spikes, these will eventually be the attachment points for the flowers. I sewed this to the hard cap but you need to make sure it is far enough back that the flowers are placed correctly between the purple headband and the blue fans, but let's not get too far ahead we should really talk about the names for the parts of the headdress.
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The chair: the dark purple piece on the top of the head and the teal comb piece this whole thing is the chair
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The Headband: most people consider it part of the chair, it is the purple part that sits like a headband and covers the ears
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Backplate: The plate on the back of Satine’s head, it also has ribbons attached
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The Forehead Gem: The dark purple part that sits on the forehead
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The Lillies: we know that what that is
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The Fans: I think we know what that is
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The Hair Flairs: this is technically part of the wig but they can be seen in the back and side
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The Earrings - The hook shaped pieces on each side of the headband.
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The Fan Gem- The gem that sits at the bottom of the fans and connects them together
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THE CHAIR
I am going to split the chair up into two pieces because I treated them differently. The purple part of the chair is 3D printed but it was not quite right. It was too narrow so I made it wider with epoxy sculpt and the ridges were inset so I added the epoxy to raise them. The very back of the chair, the purple piece under the piece with the teal gems? That piece was a little thin and flat so I built that up with epoxy as well. The seat of the chair has 3 Chicago screws holding it, THROUGH the headband down through the wig and cap.
The part that looks like a teal mantilla was also not quite the right shape so I sanded it down to what I wanted it to look like. This model also had inset designs like the seat of the chair but these I filled with resin to make it appear flat as well, matching the style of the animation. I did the same resin effect with the middle connector pieces of the chair, but the mantilla part has a WAY more important function, it holds the tips of the fans with VERY powerful magnets sitting on the back covered in teal fabric incase the glue lets go
THE HEADBAND
I made this piece out of two layers of Worbla and a piece of FossShape, I added the stretch purple over the top and made a stencil to be able to air brush the patterns onto it. These are very subtle so I only put a little dye in the brush with mostly vinegar. Before finishing the inside I applied some Chicago screws, these are going through the wig and into the hard cap so make them longer than you think you need.
BACKPLATE
This piece is assembled very similarly to the headband, using the same basic structure of Worbla and FossShape, covered in the same fabric as the fans. I then punched holes through it for the ribbons, ran them through the holes, and then secured them with a Chicago screw covered in a painted googly eye. I then added the gradient with eyeshadow, to finish this component.
FOREHEAD GEM
This piece was resin printed as the base, with a resin cast gem, in the style of the other resin cast gems used in the costume. It is attached to the chair with curved wire that runs up through the chair and twists around the middle front Chicago screw, allowing it to be moved or pivoted without breaking the connection.
LILLIES
I tried to make the Lillies out of one piece of foam but that didn’t work, so I made them out of 2 pieces of 2 mm foam, heated and dremelled into the necessary shapes. It took A LOT of trial and error on the sizes and the correct curve but it is all determined by the fans so you really need to make those first. They are attached loosely by the wire that is sticking out through the wig then secured even more with a thick ball of foam clay stuck inside and smoothed to the inner walls of the lilies. The little stamens are Apoxie sculpted and painted. The lilies are then doubly secured to the hair wisps which are secured to the head band.
FANS
The overall fan shape was just trial and error made out of paper. I put the chair on my wig form and did a bunch of finger crossing. I wish I could give more insight into this but I don’t have any, the only thing might be that the fans are not as big as you think they are, the fans are only as wide as her shoulders.
I used fosshape for the fans themselves and it might be a wasteful way to make these but because the fosshape shrinks when it hardens, I shrunk the fosshape first and then cut out the fans. I added heavy wire to the backs like you would when making a hat. Then covered them in the blue fabric I used on the outer coat because they should be the same color. I also attached magnets to the fans and to the backs of the lilies, to support the fans and attach them to the overall headpiece. The magnets on the fans are covered in the blue fabric to be invisible.
HAIR FLAIRS
I tried a few ways to make these but the best way I found was to start with foam and carve that down, then once I got them to the right shape ( which is going to be smaller than you think, the whefts you add will add volume) I carved a furrow in the back and applied wire which is how it attaches to the wig/ purple headband. After that I sealed them with wood glue and painted them a similar color to the hair.
While that was drying, I harvested wefts from the extra length cut from the wig and made small chunks of hair with UHU glue. I then applied those to the carved foam shapes and carefully used a blow dryer, hair spray, UHU glue and a rat tail comb to contour the strands to the wave of the foam. I glued those onto the innermost layer of the purple headband and filled in around the lilies with loose hair stands to seamlessly incorporate them into the whole wig look.
THE EARRINGS
THE FAN GEM
The fan gem, while the smallest piece of this build, is also one of the most important. Attaching it correctly will hold the fans in place, and allow you to move your head freely. The base piece is a resin 3D print, with an inset resin cast jewel, like all the other ones previously mentioned. The back has 2 chicago screws, which get inserted through small button holes on the lower tips of the fans. I would use chicago screws instead of gluing to allow the fans to move independently of each other and the connecting gem piece
These are also resin printed, but I needed to find a different way to create the same opal effect on a three-dimensional shape. For these, I painted them the same teal color as the manilla on the chair and then liberally applied the mylar flakes, the same ones used for the resin jewels. I then put a wire through the earrings to maintain the hole openings and applied 5 coats of XTC-3D to each one. This gave me a very lumpy earring, so to fix this I then sanded back down any of the bumpy bits, and got it back to its original smooth look.
Like the other opal gems, I covered it in matte nail polish, then pulled out the wire, threaded a few loops of invisible thread through them and attached a lobster claw clasp, which would then be attached to small o-rings on the headband. This unfortunately let them move freely, and they wanted to constantly rotate. To counteract that I sanded down a spot in the back and applied a magnet, sewing a jump ring to the fan to hold it in place, covered in blue thread to allow it to blend in.
FINAL THOUGHTS AND AWARDS
Overall look
It took 2 years and there were ALOT if tears and headache, but I did learn a lot about a bunch of stuff.
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How Star Wars clubs work, as far as face characters
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Community of Satine fans.
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How leather corsets are made (that I need a bunch of those in my life).
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How to cast opals and how to make simple molds.
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A lot about 3D modeling and mechanical drawings, which is something I haven't done since middle school
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I can't forget about wigs and all the engineering of creating a structure underneath it ​