杏眼桃腮

The title of this blog post is a Chinese phrase literally meaning almond eyes and peach cheeks, and as you can probably guess, it's referring to a girl's beauty! I thought it would perfectly describe my lovely girl Polaire, who's the subject of my post today. I've been working on a project that I started almost a month ago, and only recently have I made some serious progress with it. If you refer to some of my previous posts, I've mentioned things about the origin of Polaire as an MMO avatar that I used for various game, the most recent being a game called Blade & Soul. Here's how she looks in game, if you haven't seen my post from earlier - and it just so happens that the outfit that I'm trying to recreate is the outfit she's wearing in that screencap!

Here's a stack of materials I've collected for this project:

A rigid satin taffeta, a white chiffon-like fabric, some shiny black stretch lycra, and braided elastic.

The outfit as I've adapted it consists of a corset/leotard piece, a shirt with balloon sleeves, two wristguards, a neckpiece, and a set of leggings with a lace inset. Some of the items in the original game outfit can't be translated into a practical sewing design, so I've made changes accordingly. For instance, I've omitted some of the detailing on the leggings and corset simply because it's impossible to create 3D details in such a small scale/I simply don't have the materials or skills to do so. Without further ado, here's my progress so far! I've completed the corset and the shirt.

The corset consists of 13 pieces (and 12 identical pieces for the lining) and is completely handsewn because I'm at school and I don't have access to a sewing machine (I also suck at sewing with the machine, so I'd rather just not). My first few attempts were with the machine and they didn't work out, so this is actually Mark III of the corset =3= I'm still waiting on my black ribbon for the fastening so I'm temporarily lacing it up in the back with a few loose stitches.

 

Here's my most recent update! I finished the shirt just yesterday, and I just edited the shoulder ties a bit today, but I don't have pictures of that right now. The shirt closes up in the back with snap closures, and the sleeves have elastic stitched into them at the cuffs. So far progress is going really well considering it's only my second time sewing an outfit (the only other time I've sewn a major project is a red Christmas dress I made for Lenny)... I'm going to start drafting the other pieces soon!

❤ mura