Shirt/Vest Details

The buttons I chose were white roses. The anime has Anthy wearing plain white large buttons, but I like to interpret costumes to an extent instead of following every detail slavishly, and I decided it fit the character more to have the detail of white roses for buttons.

The false pockets are made of white muslin folded into a distorted pentagon shape. I ironed the muslin shape onto a fusible interfacing backing, to provide support without visible seams. To make the gold detailing on the pockets, I ironed gold ribbon onto fusible interfacing, then sewed it to the top of the white pockets. I sewed a strip of Velcro onto the pockets before I put the gold bands on, and sewed the opposite half of the Velcro to the vest, so the pockets are removable for washing.

The white strip on the left upper breast - where the name tag would be on a military uniform, which provided the inspiration for the original design - is made of white bias tape doubled over and ironed onto fusible interfacing. It's also attached with Velcro. Had I been thinking, I would have sewed the Velcro strip to the interfacing before ironing it onto the bias tape, but I wasn't that smart so the white seam is visible. *sigh*

I sewed thin bias tape onto the edges of the vest all around. I thought about using wide bias tape and wrapping it around the edge of the vest and sewing it that way, but I have a problem with keeping it even and looking nice when I try that, so I decided not to do that and instead topstitched the thin tape on. Going around the corners was tricky, but I managed to fold the tape reasonably attractively on the corners.

The collar insignia were made from gold ribbon ironed on to fusible interfacing, then cut into triangles and sewed to the collar, and the edges soaked in Fray-Check. If I do a costume like this again, I'm going to try to use something other than this ribbon, because I'm afraid that the interfacing and the Fray-Check aren't going to stop the fraying forever. It's very hard to find a non-fraying gold material, however.

Click on the images for larger versions.