Sinon
Sword Art Online

Inspiration: All my friends were watching Sword Art Online, so I checked it out and really enjoyed it. I continued on reading the light novels and decided I really liked Sinon. Other than her being a strong female character, she’s also a blue cat girl, so I couldn’t resist.

Materials/Construction Details: My coat is made out of suiting with hand made gold satin bias tape around all the edges. So that there wouldn’t be any visible stitching on top of the bias tape, I used my machine to sew one side down and then hand stitched the back side of the tape around the entire coat. That was very time consuming, so I was very happy with how it turned out. Other details were appliqued on using the same gold satin.

Finding reference pictures for this outfit of Sinon’s was difficult, so the sleeve was quite a challenge first to design and then to make. The sleeve alone had 36 mitered corners on it and required extensive hand sewing to have invisible stitching like on the coat.

All the belts across the chest and back were made using black vinyl and I stitched industrial velcro to where the belts would connect to the chest plate. The chest armor itself was made out of two layers of worbla, which were heatformed to my chest. Once I had it the shape I wanted, I painted several layers of gesso on top of the worbla, sanded it down until it was smooth, and then painted it silver. After that, I went back over the edges and weathered it by adding shadows and highlights.

The shorts, thigh highs, and boots were all purchased. I used black sports tape for the hand wraps. The ears and tail were made out of light blue fur, which luckily matched the wig quite well.

Wig: The wig is Arda’s Magnum XL in powder blue. I trimmed the extra layers in the back of the wig and left the front long. I sewed extra wefts in at the side to make her longer pieces that are tied in ribbon thicker. I then turned the wig upside down, heated it up with a hair dryer, and then hair sprayed the hair in the back for a scruffy look with the layers.