Fate/Unlimited Codes: Saber Lily Progress (Anime Expo) Pt. 2

Hello!! Time to post part two (you can find part 1 here) of building my Saber Lily cosplay. In this entry I’ll be covering my armor as well, so I’ll try to explain as much as I can!

I heavily looked towards Gyakuyoga’s Saber Armor tutorial in creating my armor, although there’s definitely a lot of room for improvement. I could only use what worbla I already had, so it was a bit difficult finishing certain parts of the armor (I’ll be fixing everything up in time for Sakuracon, however!)

It’s been awhile since I first tackled making armor so, again, I began in a way I find most comfortable and familiar – paper patterning! 

After getting the general idea and sizing down, I used this to cut everything out of craft foam!

Her separate neckpiece, freehand hotgluing the raised design lol….

Fitting the armor on! Starting to get the hang of making darts in the foam to get the curves.

Messy, messy….

I took a break to work on the dress next! I’d been avoiding this tricky part hahaha….

Lots of math involved! I wanted to make sure everything was equal, since black bias tape on a pastel pink dress is asking for obvious mistakes :(!

Starting with the triangle designs~

Then adding the trim! So many mitered corners!!!!!

With them sewn on! I found it way easier to make a seam at the bodice waist, and then sewing the panels with the extra peplum-esque piece sandwiched in between.

In hindsight, I should’ve actually made the grey pieces a box pleat, rather than just sewing triangles on. You’ll see in my future shots that they stick out while I’m standing! 🙁 instead of being neatly tucked in between the panels, like I’d wanted. I’ll be fixing this part up as well!!

Everything fanned out on the floor! Next I need to add the zipper in the center back.

Desperately trying to improve on sewing invisible zippers lol! My new sewing machine makes this so much easier ;__;

It almost lines up ;__;! My little helper lol….

For a change of scenery, I went over to Ellen’s place in West Seattle so that we could work on our cosplays for AX together! The work I had to do involved a lot of waiting for woodglue to dry though. 🙁

The progress I was making with my hip armor! Had to make 6 of these @__@!! Thank goodness for my new heatgun… Also in hindsight — I want to draft up this pattern onto illustrator and then print it out so that I can more accurately hotglue this design onto my armor lol I had to redraw this for all 6 pieces….. To give the armor dimension and stability, I added a trim of worbla all around!

After going home, I continued working, working, working on my armor… until they were all ready to be primed and painted!! Here’s how everything looks with a coat of Plasti-dip. My process is pretty much the same setup as my first attempt at armor-making, except instead of coating everything with layers and layers of gesso, I used Gorilla Wood glue. In my opinion, not only did it seal the armor, it also created a very sturdy, smooth surface to work with. I highly recommend it. (Thanks Ellen for the tip!! :D)

Since moving to a new apartment without a balcony, I found it a bit difficult to find a place to spraypaint my armor… I was later given a warning by maintenance not to spraypaint in the garage ever again LOLOL…. If you have this same issue, I think there are workshops you can go to, but otherwise going to a friends’ place with their own private garage would be best.

Everything primed up! You can see which have more gorilla woodglue layers (the darker, shinier pieces) and which don’t 🙁 ahh! 

Next comes weathering! I went a bit too ham on the bottom lol but when it’s all put together it looked nice… I weathered the armor using black acrylic paint and a dry paintbrush. The trick is to work slowly, and darken the weathering gradually.

One set all complete! You can see I ran out of worbla for the bottom two pieces >< definitely going to buy some more to fix that!

How it looks from the side 🙂

The next steps were just rinse and repeat for the chestplate!! Here’s how it looks all nice and pretty. There’s a large layer of worbla over the original craft foam chestplate to secure and strengthen the piece.

Here’s a shot of the armguards pre-paint and…. mayonnaise… I was trying to grab my woodglue and ended up grabbing this instead. lol

Progression of attaching the armor on!! I would later regret my method of fastening my armor because of the Cali heat and its ability to melt foam.

My armguards finished!

My next post will be about attaching the armor and keeping everything secure and sturdy for a full 3-day con! Which did not happen when I wore this my first day of AX LOL!