Cosplay Costume: Hetalia Chibitalia

I am offering a Cosplay/Costume sewing class at the middle school. When I started talking about it, I realized that I did not know ANY of the characters that the girls wanted to make. One girl said she wanted to make the dress for Hetalia Chibitalia. Can I show you? Here is what she wanted.

Here is what she created.

Really, her joy in this dress just radiates off the page. I had a parental-pride moment here and this is not even my daughter. WOW was this a success!!!! This Stitch Lab girl is eleven. Can you even stand it? Eleven and she produced this gem!!!

When she first told me who she wanted to be and showed me the picture I thought we could make a great dress like that. It’s super conservative all things considered. So, I started asking questions to make sure we were going to get what this anime fan had envisioned. I said something about “her hat/kerchief” and she got very quiet. She said, “Miss Susi, that’s a boy.”
“Oh.”

That was still a really sweet little dress, but clearly, I was going to need more information. What is the symbolism behind this character?  I figured out that I should really get parental approval for ALL the costumes. So I made up a form. Students were required to fill in the name of the character, what the character represents in the story, and what pattern we are going to use. They needed my approval for the pattern (to make sure their sewing skills met what the pattern called for) and they needed parental approval on the whole thing. I wanted to be sure that no one was asking to make “The Empress of the Dark Nights of the Abyss in the Forest”. The costume also had to have a certain “taste level” (as our beloved Nina Garcia (Project Runway Judge) would so aptly remind us.)

We found this pattern for Alice in Wonderland and thought we had a great match. We modified the blue dress to suit our character.

• First we made a lining for the top and tried that on. We modified the fit of the outside layer baised on that initial fitting.
• We added long sleeves to the bottom of the puff. That pattern piece was already there for the witch costume, so that was an easy piece to add.
• We sewed the eyelet trim on the bottom of the skirt.
• We used a very wide gross grain ribbon for the bow in the back and 2″ ribbon for the straps.
• We added a Pellon foam product to the sleeve caps to make them stand up a little bit more.

My little friend was on a tight deadline to finish this in time to wear to San Jose’s first ever Comic Con. I had the occasion to be downtown for something unrelated and I can tell you the city was in grid lock. The traffic and the crowds were AMAZING.

Here she is with her wig on at Comic Con. She almost looks like an Anime character there! I have to believe that it was a wild flaming success. From the perspective of my lovely Hetalia, it was tons of fun!!!