Ninetails Progress backstory

Ninetails by Sunset Dragon

I started working on Ninetails a few years ago while I was living in NYC with a good friend of mine. Through a series of events (some complicated and some not) I ended up pushing the costume on the backburner and picked it up again late 2019 when I started to consistently live streaming my making process.

By this point I had already had the base dress sewing together using Simplicity Pattern 1009. I made modifications to the sleeves to make them larger and more flowing like Sunset Dragon’s artwork. Along with the sleeve shape I also needed to alter where the arm hole was located. The original sleeve pattern had a basic renne faire type sleeve where the design has a more unique slit in the sleeve for the arm to come out.

Previous to live streaming the rest of the work on this costume I made each of the tails out of a Faux Fur that I hand dyed the tips before sewing and stuffing them with batting. I used the acrylic in method to dye the ends of the tails. This is a similar method I used in an old tutorial for dying a wig. I like to use this method for gradient dying rather than using the stove and RIT Dye method though both get the job and and it’s really more about what you are comfortable with. I already had the supplies do to the acrylic ink method so I used that method. I technically could have also done it with RIT dye for synthetic fabric and carefully done the gradient/ends that way too.

After my hiatus from working on this costume I picked it up again and began live streaming my progress on my Twitch channel. The next pieces that I worked on were the details for the dress around the sleeves and finishing the edges. In an effort to keep these posts manageable I’ve broken the build logs out into large piece sections for each of the major components of the costume.