Epaulets

Here we come to the most complicated part of the costume. Anthy has gold epaulets with tassels hanging from them. Looking at other versions of the costume made by cosplayers, I wasn't able to find any epaulets that I really liked. Most people just sewed flat gold ribbon to the shoulders for the bar section of the epaulets, despite them being very obviously three-dimensional in the character design sheets. Also, the balls were often too big, or hung weirdly, and the tassels were stuck onto the side of the balls, instead of the bottoms, so they draped strangely. The fringe on military epaulets hangs *down*, not *out*. Also, because I wanted the costume washable, the epaulets had to be detachable, so I couldn't sew the balls to the shoulders of the vest as many cosplayers do.

I had a friend over during part of the costume construction process, and he provided invaluable help in figuring out how to construct the epaulets. We ended up finding a form of gold cording that had a flat woven section attached to it (see picture) that usually serves to help sew the cording into a seam. I took this cording, doubled it so the flat parts overlapped, and sewed them together. Cording frays like mad, so I soaked the ends with epoxy, let them sit overnight, then trimmed them carefully with scissors to look neat. I then sewed Velcro to the bottom of the epaulet and to the shoulders of the vest.

The balls were made of orange Ping-Pong balls painted with gold craft paint. The craft paint boasted "Use on all paintable surfaces!" but apparently Ping Pong balls don't count as paintable surfaces, because it took about eight coats to get a decent covering, even after the surface was sanded to rough it up and allow the paint to stick. Using orange balls was a stroke of luck. We didn't realize the paint wouldn't cover them that well, but with orange balls all it needed to do was provide a gold sheen.

My friend bored four holes in each Ping Pong ball so I could sew it on to the epaulets. I didn't have a curved upholstery needle available, but a few minutes with two pairs of needlenose pliers and an embroidery needle produced a reasonable approximation of one. It was hard going to get it through the holes that were too close together, but the needlenose pliers let me pull the needle through. The weight of the tassels would pull the Ping Pong ball and the end of the epaulet down, so I sewed the balls slightly on top of the end of the epaulet, instead of directly on the end (see the third picture below for illustration).

The tassels were drapery tassels. They were made with the top being significantly wider than the shaft of the tassel, so my friend bored holes in the Ping Pong balls that were wider than the shaft of the tassel, but not as wide as the bulbous top of the tassel, and I shoved them into the holes in the balls and ran a line of epoxy around the lip of the hole to fix the tassels in there. Epoxy rules.

Click on the images for a larger version.