Haruhara Haruko
FLCL

Cosplayed by:
Souken

Made by:
Souken

Worn at:
SakuraCon 2003

Cost:
$30

Time:
10 hours

Patterns, guides, etc.
Butterick #3572

Why?
Well, it started out that I saw a picture of Haruko and really like her outfit, so I was going to do that. The problem was that I had never seen FLCL before and I eventually decided that I was better off doing a costume that I was familiar with. So I was going to do Sango from Inuyasha instead, and I went out and bought $30 of pink fabric. Well, I finally got to see FLCL and realized that Haruko was too cool to pass up. I ended up using all that pink fabric to test the jacket pattern.

How it was made
The only part of this costume that I had to make was the jacket. First off, vinyl is hell to work with. It's stiff and hard to sew through, and if you take out stitches, it leaves a line of little holes that are easy to pull apart. The black stripes were a little difficult, because I decided that instead of just sewing them on top of the red, I was going to cut out the red and sew in the black. Due to the stripes being slanted, it was a bit tricky getting them placed correctly. I had to hand sew the zipper in place. I'm horrible at hand sewing, so the zipper ended up coming undone a little at the bottom. I bought some white vinyl and was going to make some boot covers, but I never got around to it.

How it turned out
This has to be my favorite costume so far. It was really exciting getting so much recognition. I got asked to take alot of pictures. There was only a few complaints I had. The jacket was a bit stiff and hot, and I would have liked it to fit better. It made me look a bit wide around the waist. I would have liked to paint my guitar blue, but I didn't want to mess with it. Also, word to the wise: never use colored hair gel! It made my hair all stiff and icky, and I didn't do much to color my hair. Other than that, I think it turned out really well. I'm really happy with it.

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