Progress on Tekken's Jaycee cosplay

SuperCon is right around the corner again, and so I am reminded of the cosplay project I aborted last year after scrambling for a month to get it done... Jaycee from Tekken Tag Tournament 2.

nailed it?

All things considered I got this costume to about 90% completion, but as it turns out with all the things I try to make without enough notice, it's not a great job... in fact, it fit so poorly I couldn't bring myself to wear it to the con and be photographed in it; instead opting to wear Mimori, which I was well aware would not be a popular costume for an event like SuperCon.

Here's a rundown of how I went about it, which was just me figuring things out on my own and being too confident about my sewing, story of my cosplay life = bite more than I can chew! (A post has been made focusing on the luchador mask).

Thankfully there are PLENTY of reference photos for Jaycee's luchador costume, like this production sketch. After staring a pictures for a long time, I went out in search for the perfect material to make the costume. I chose a lycra with glittery sequins, the white lycra is slightly iridescent and was the hardest to settle on, since sometimes the material looks rather silvery, but I felt that going for something too silver wouldn't balance the costume well. Also, this was going to be the only costly portion of the costume, so I was willing to throw my hard earned dollars at it.

swatches and costume details

 The only problem with the white lycra is that it wasn't as thick as the pink and blue lycra, so it's going to have to be reinforced...

color combo

Since Jaycee's wrestling bodysuit is beyond original in it's design I figured I should pattern it on myself for the best fit and go from there. I started by roughly tracing a bodysuit I already owned, this could've also been done by tracing a once piece swimsuit.

tracing the bodysuit pattern

To test the several iterations of the bodysuit until I could start cutting an actual pattern, I used really old big t-shirts, the material was stretchy enough to simulate the final fabric.

This process involved a lot of roughly sewing the bodysuit, putting in on, drawing on it, cutting, sewing, drawing, cutting, taking it off over and over until it started looking like the design. I roughly added the buckles and gave it a few more adjustments.

more patterning!

Now for the scary part: cutting the pattern on the actual lycra!! After this point, I only get to mess up ONCE.

Hmm, actually, not bad, this totally looks like the thing, right?

For the studded belts on the hip and halter, I found a belt in Goodwill that had the studs I wanted, I just had to cut it in half and sew it to my uses. Studding a belt myself would've been too costly, no thanks!

One step that DID prove to be costly and time consuming was adding grommets for the lace-up thigh high boots. Tewibewi had a grommet puncher from when she made her Dixie Clements costume, but it's a cumbersome machine to use, so I put my all purpose Asian on this tedious task.

cosplay workshop helpers

the tiniest things are always the biggest pains in the @$$ to do....

Also I did and undid the bootcovers TWICE because I measured them all wrong, and only realized after having lined them with the trim. Unsurprisingly I'm gonna have to do them over AGAIN because they're still hideous and the shoes I chose to cover them with won't work out after all.

Tewibewi trying to salvage my lack of skills

For this cosplay I get to use my actual hair, just gotta make sure to dye it a natural brown color rather than the crazy rainbow that is my usual style lately. Lastly, Julia's pendant with the blue stone and triple wings was made by Krystalchains, since I was really pressed for time and she already had the skills to make it.

Julia Chang Jaycee cuz I didn't want to war the mask.

I wore the costume for ONE night at a cosplay after party during SuperCon, and thankfully it was dark in there because after all the costume faults started to become apparent, I decided I couldn't wear it in the daytime to the convention.

I was so burned out from making and failing to complete the costume, I didn't want to touch it until now (a year later), after thinking long and hard about how to fix it. It bothers me so much how bad I butchered it up I'm really fired up to get it right, thankfully it can be salvaged, I think.

I started using Cosplanner app to organize my cosplay projects and see how much I'm spending (I was already doing this in Excel), but the app is really neat because it lets me organize different tasks, costs, and references. I roughly estimated how much time I spent working on it, but now that I've started fixing up I'll get an actual time for the construction. Jaycee attempt #1 stats: