Making Jaycee's Luchador Mask!

For Florida SuperCon this past July, I had planned to debut this costume of Julia Chang as the mysterious luchadora "Jaycee," seen in Tekken Tag Tournament 2.

Unfortunately, I underestimated the amount of work this costume would take (as usual) and was not able to finish on time, but I've made lots of progress on it!

I started this costume by tackling the mask. I found these scans on how to make an authentic Mexican Luchador Mask to use as a reference for making Jaycee's mask (although they're too small to read).

However, there's several major differences between this legit mask, and the design for Jaycee's mask:

1. Jaycee's mask does not have a "skull top." Actually, it has a seamless impossibility going on in the area that protrudes out where the feathers are attached.
2. The mask does not lace up from behind, instead there is an opening for her ponytail.
3. The mask ends above her nose, it does not have the portion above the lip, which prevents the mask from moving out of place (kinda important if you're wrestling).

Sigh, oh game designers and their impossible designs, although, all things considered, their design was mostly grounded on what should be "REAL" and possible for her to wear as a luchador, but once I starting putting it all together, the impossible bits started to appear.

my first rough pattern for the mask

cutting out the pattern from lycra

test fit!

Since my costume will be made almost entirely of shiny lycra, and this material is too flimsy to stand on it's own, I gave certain pieces a reinforced backing with some scraps of a canvas like fabric I had. I initially planned to sew the details to the mask, but they were so small, and the mask as so difficult to maneuver in the sewing machine, I ended up using fabric glue to attach many of the pieces.

Fabric glue also works good for attaching the rhinestone.

adding the details

Since I was pressed for time, I bought white feathers and decided to dye the tips black myself. I also did this because I wanted to have more control over the color and give them a gradient effect.

I used a mixture of india ink watered down with alcohol to paint over the tips, I made cups with varying ink saturation to graduate the color.

Once they were painted, I gave them two coats of watered down school glue to seal the paint job, just in case.

Remember that seam impossibility I mentioned earlier? Well, the only way to successfully pull off  Jaycee's mask design is to have a base mask, and then a front part where all the decorations are, they can't be part of the same piece of fabric that make "head" of the mask, because it wouldn't fit tightly enough (or maybe it's too complicated to sew so I didn't even want to figure out how to do it that way!)

At this point, the problem became hiding the two parts to the mask (since the design appears seamless) and recreating the eye-holes, which were one of the most difficult parts to figure out. And also, how to attach the FEATHERS!?

Fabric glue, fabric glue all the way, my friends.

My finished mask:

Even though I took in the mask several times, it's still a little too big.  Actually after putting everything on, I think I'm not satisfied with the eye-holes at all, or the fact that you can see the two parts to the mask. I only realized that the proportions to some of the decorations are wrong after compiling this blog post.

SO I WILL BE RE-MAKING THIS AAAUUUUGGHHHH!