We did a lot of research on Korean hanbok and how to construct them properly. We kept in mind that these are stage outfits for popstars and not traditional hanbok and had some fun with the sewing portion of this project. As someone who has made multiple Chinese hanfu and is familiar with this style of garment sewing, I selected a medium weight liquid satin as the hanbok fabric and guided our group through the patterning process. Each cosplayer did their own sewing, and we coordinated with each other on techniques, details and accessories for the whole set of costumes.

The girls' skirts very obviously light up in the concept art, so we collaborated with fiber optic fabric company @lumisonata_official to use white, pink and yellow fabric for each Huntr/x member. I constructed my volumenous skirt with knife pleats and as a wrap skirt to honor the hanbok style. It is lined in white because the fiber optic fabric itself is slightly seethrough, and the lining also allowed me to hide the cables and numerous light bulbs. To give the skirt that Magical Girl look, I made an overlayer from colorshifting illusion organza that was pleated in with the main layer. 

I also made pockets for the 2 batteries in the lining, as well as a 3rd pocket for my phone and personal items. There are 3 petticoats underneath to poof out the skirt. I can turn it on and off on my own and it has over a dozen different light and color settings. 

When it came to embellishments, we decided early on to utilize embroidery and heat transfer vinyl. Rumi's jeogori (cropped tie top) has billowing sleeves and a large gold dragon emblazened all over it. 

I once again teamed up with Siser North America to tackle this complicated project. 

First, I mapped out the dragon across the jeogori after drafting my pattern. The dragon head is situated on the left sleeve and its body winds around the sleeve across the shoulder and front of the jeogori, then down the right shoulder with its tail showing on the right sleeve. I paid attention to where the front and back sleeve seams meet, and where the sleeves meet the shoulder seams so the dragon body is cohesive when viewed from different angles. A fun little puzzle project.

Then came the monumental job of vectorizing the dragon body. Keith Allison from Siser N. A. is a master graphic artist and helped me create the elaborate blue designs on my Chun-Li costume. Rumi's dragon was even a step up in complexity and he spent many hours designing and drawing out each component, following my jeogori pattern flat lays and positioning maps. I truly can't thank him enough for joining me on this project! 

While Keith worked on the dragon vectors, I cut and serged all the pieces of the jeogori in lavender liquid satin. Once I received the glorious finished files from him and did a whole evening of test cuts, placement tests and small tweaks, it was time to apply the gold dragon! I cut almost 20 feet of Siser Easyweed Metal in Gold on my trusted Romeo cutter, weeded them and used the Siser Heat Press to apply the HTV to each jeogori piece. It was a whole production where my craft room became a dragon den with different stations, machines and piles of materials!

Once the huge task of dragon HTV was completed, I finally asembled the jeogori. But I wasn't done with embellishing this garment yet, as Rumi also has a stylized multi-color cloud pattern on her right sleeve! This design had to be realized as an embroidery, so I used the Cosplay Stitchery embroidery software by @designsinmachineembroidery to digitize the clouds. It's a fun and user-friendly program that exports to all standard embroidery machines, bernette included. I of course used my bernette 79 Yaya Han Edition embroidery machine to realize this design. I did a couple of full test stitches to finalize the size, colors and density of stitches, which is always recommended with embroidery. I also made sure to test embroider on gold Easyweed Metal because that's what I have to do for Rumi's costume!

Finally, I hooped up my almost finished jeogori with the DIME magnetic mega hoop so the Easyweed won't crease on the satin, and stitched out the cloud design with 7 different thread colors over the course of 70 minutes. The final piece came out beautifully and gave me a lot of confidence in doing more unconventional embroidery projects in the future!

At this point I have spent almost a week on just the top piece of my costume lol, but it was super satisfying to add the collar, colorful sleeve bands and lining. The finished jeogori is my favorite piece on the Rumi costume, even above the light up skirt!

Next came the belt, underbodice and accessories. I went to a huge fabric wholesale market in Guangzhou in July and found a great satin ribbon company. We had already decided to do the battle hanboks so I picked up many meters of double sided satin ribbons in every color of the rainbow. These were divvied up amongst us three along with matching white floral jacquard for the bodices and ornate gold bells for the belt accessories. We also used rainbow colored trims from @cosplayfabrics, graciously provided by our distributor @famorecutlery. 

My purple belt was made like all my hanfu belts - backed with coutil, boned and finished with a Hong Kong edge trim. I also vectorized the gold designs on my belt and cut them out of Siser Easyweed Metal. The finishing touch were the rainbow ribbons fanned out at Rumi's hip, strung gold bells and her norigae, which is a surprisingly well done replica by Dokidoki. 

My amazing Rumi wig was a commission made by master wig maker @rentchan! It's a helmet wig made with a lace front Victor wig and a 2nd wig for weft harvesting from @ardawigs!

Rumi's swords were made by @plexicosplay, who went mega viral with these during the summer. They light up with rechargable batteries and I love them so so much! We wore our costumes twice during Holiday Matsuri so I used both the longword and the broadsword!

The spiky shoulder pads were made by @storytellercosplay. We each contributed something to this group and took charge in one area or another, making this a true collaboration!