| Anime costumers gathered a couple of times on AnimeIowa's Saturday. Catherine, a fan of this site who wore an El-Hazard costume, showed pictures from this site to show some of the most elaborate costumes of the year. People exchanged suggestions on how to achieve some of the fanciest and most complicated costuming effects. While those detailed costumes take weeks of work to complete... |  |
| ...can a costume be created in two hours? Sure, replied costumer Elizabeth Sloan, who pulled out her scissors, sewing machine, measuring tape and board and went to work. The trick for beginning costumes is to choose something simple, and her choice was a short kimono-style shirt worn by Tenchi Masaki in the Tenchi-Muyo series when that character is at home. "Kimonos are made out of squares and rectangles - can you cut out a rectangle," said Sloan. She took two sections of cloth, one pale blue and white, and asked for volunteers from the audience. |  |
| One woman was chosen (by drawing the card with the Tenchi picture from Tuxedo Mask's top hat). That woman was measured for the costume pattern, to make sure it fit the costumer the same as it had fit the animated Tenchi. The sleeves were sized to fall halfway down the arms, the main pattern was cut from the blue cloth and the cuffs of the sleeves were added from the white cloth. |  |
| The finished product was ready after a short time and given to the costumer, who wore it around the convention during the afternoon. One shortcut was taken, in that a black stripe seen on the Tenchi original was painted on the costume where it might have been a separate strip of cloth. |  |
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