Gallery

Thank you to Elemental, Mike Kowalek, Derek Lai and GoddessDigi for the photos!

Costume Information

I decided to cosplay Kiki for a number of reasons: I wanted to cosplay a character from a Miyazaki film and I like Kiki a lot. I also wanted to make an inexpensive costume and I had a large piece of purple fabric I wanted to use. In the end, I ended up buying new fabric and spending a lot more than I planned, but I think it was worth it.

I made the dress out of dark purple wool that's super soft and falls beautifully. I tried to make her dress look as much like the one in the film as possible. It was rather simple to pattern and construct, and I hand-sewed all the edges so that there would be no visible top-stitching. I also installed an invisible zipper into the back of the dress.

The bow was made out of some red twill I had, which I interfaced to give it some extra stiffness. It's the first fabric bow I've ever made and I'm proud of how it came out. I covered a headband in the same fabric and then sewed the bow to the headband.

The shoes were bought and worn as is.

The broom was made out of a wooden dowel, some pieces of wood I found in an interior decorating section of a trade shop, twine and wood glue. I cut the pieces of wood to a given length and then glued each piece one-by-one onto the end of the wooden dowel. The broom didn't end up as "poofy" as I'd hoped it would be, but I'm proud of it.

The bag was made out of orange linen that my friend Becky found for me. This was my first time making a bag like this and I think it came out great, considering. It's fully lined with pockets on the inside. I loved having this bag as a prop since I could put all my stuff inside it and didn't need to carry a separate purse while I was cosplaying. To make the bag seem more "full", I stuffed it with tribbles I made previously. LOL.

It's not pictured here, but I printed out hundreds of pieces of "mail" to give out while cosplaying Kiki. (She is a delivery witch, after all.) I addressed these pieces of fake mail to characters I figured I would run into while cosplaying. Inside my bag, I constructed a series of folders to keep this mail organized so when I spotted a character, I could easily and quickly reach into my bag and hand them their mail. People who recognized who I was cosplaying thought it was really neat that I was actually giving out "mail". Not to mention that giving out mail as Kiki was super fun! X3

My friend Elemental needle-felted a Jiji plush toy for me that looks absolutely AMAZING! She put magnets into him so I can easily attach him to my shoulder or bag while cosplaying. Thank you, Amanda! :D ♥

« Back to the Costume Gallery