The Windy - Card Captor Sakura
The design of Windy is fairly simple (she's pretty much naked, winged and glowy), so I decided to exercise artistic license and elaborate on the design. I'm pretty happy with this costume, although the wig just *barely* fit over all my hair because I didn't know about padding out your wig head, and after about an hour in the Green Room my head was in extreme pain from the tightness and weight.
This is the costume that taught me that beading is addictive. I bought a whole bunch of iridescent white and yellow and pink and pale-blue beads, and just went totally nuts with them. Windy is the result of approximately five months of sewing and beading while listening to Star Trek on TV. All the hems are beaded, and the overdress panels have scattered beads coming up from the bottom hem. There's also a lot of dangly bead trim, all done by hand. This is also the costume that taught me to see what things look like from further away than sewing distance, because all those beads basically became invisible from more than a few feet away.
Windy was very well received at Anime North 2002. I think the best moment was when I walked on stage and the entire audience gasped. ^_^ I was just happy I didn't trip on the trailing skirts and fall on my face, or have the wig fall apart. It was definitely a learning experience.
The wings are hand-painted silk over a wire frame, attached to a shoulder assembly made of wire mesh covered in felt. Feathers were then hot-glued to the shoulder assembly, and many fingers were burned.
I bought a long straight wig and built Windy's hair using foam for the sticky-out bits, then wrapping them in extra hair. It was my first attempt at major wig surgery, and I was fairly happy with it, although it didn't turn out exactly how I'd planned. This was long before the cosplay community had figured out how to make crazy gravity-defying wig styles. The wing headdress is silver-plated wire strung with beads, then sewn onto the wig.
This costume is retired.
Awards won: Best Workmanship in Show; Best Presentation (Journeyman Division) - Anime North 2002
