Jill Valentine
Onimusha Soul
- First worn to Anime Festival Orlando 2013
- Spent around $65
- Worked on this for about a month
It should be obvious by now that I absolutely love Jill, so when I first saw this character art I knew it had to be done. I decided to go with her standard outfit because I felt it was the one that looked the most recognizable. Since I only had the one reference photo to work with I decided to take a lot of artistic liberties with the costume. So I will say that my version is no way 100% accurate but is more my interpretation of the design.
Dee suggested that I use a brocade fabric instead of a solid for the dress. This was my first time using brocade as the main fabric in the costume. I definitely struggled with the initial pattern for the dress. Even after making a mock up based off of a Simplicity pattern I still found the fit all wrong. Eventually I found a similar wrap dress in my closet and I cut it up to make a pattern that I could work off of. The dress is lined in cotton and has craft fuse for added stability. I lined the edges with flat pearl trim because I wasn't really liking the look of the plain white around the edges.
The belt is made out of green dragonfly brocade and the smaller brown belt is a soft costume vinyl. I used casa satin for both the sash and the bold bow that goes over the shoulder. Obviously you can see that Jill's shawl is crazy big but I didn't want to drag around a sheet of fabric with me so I scaled it down. You can kind of see that the costume has some kind of knee high boots going on but I decided to simplify this look instead of figuring out what the heck is going on down there! I purchased cute brocade sandals and white tabi socks to fit the overall theme of the costume.
For added effect I placed my STARS patch on the edge of the shawl and my little RPD pin on the gold bow. The hair flower I purchased at JoAnn's and the earrings and necklace were purchased in the dealer room from Zen Soup Cafe. I did my own make up using a smokey eye pallet and of course I used colored contacts.