I've known of Witch Hat Atelier for years but to be honest, I'm not much of a manga reader nowadays, and prefer watching anime, so when I watched the first two episodes that were released? I jumped in full tilt. I binged the whole manga in a matter of a couple days and even now I'm OBSESSED. So imagine my joy when I found the PERFECT teal colored denim twill for the capes the students wear, I did not hesitate to make my sweet girl Tetia!
In addition to the teal denim, I knew I didn't want super stark contrast so opted for a more soft off white denim and a midnight navy satin for the white and black accents in the art. At the time I started making this cosplay, there weren't patterns widely available, so I spent time drafting my own pattern, which would've been more successful if I'd done the smart thing and done some mockups!
For the cape, it's made up of a solid center back piece, two “sleeves”, two center front yoke pieces that overlap, and a bib piece that hangs over. Starting with the bib, I first split the pattern into two pieces, a front and back so I could taper the shoulders to being a closer fit, fully sewing one shoulder seam, but giving the other shoulder a magnetic closure to be able to easily take the bib on and off. I then mapped out where I wanted the buttonholes to be as well as where I wanted the pockets to lie. Once I had those sorted, I then made the holes for the pocket because while there are two openings, there is in fact only one very large pocket! After the openings were created, I was able to then line the bid piece and turn it right side out, and finish it with top stitching and prepping for the buttonholes.
And unfortunately for me, my sewing machine isn't able to sew buttonholes for buttons that are an inch and a half in diameter, so I had to do handbound buttonholes! Since I wasn't planning to do so initially, I was very surprised to find a perfect match of embroidery floss in my stash to be able to sew those, and that was it for the front half of the bib. For the back half of the bib, I first had to sketch out what I wanted the off white loop detail to look like. After tracing several circular items and playing around with rulers I was able to make something I was happy with I decided I wanted it to be a little bit more substantial, so I did two layers of a thin cotton batting before top stitching it to the back of the bib and sewing two more large buttonholes into the ends so that they could connect to the front of the cape via the existing buttons.
The rest of the coat came together pretty easily with the exception of I kept having a weird fitting issue with the heads of the sleeves to the point where I actually left this unfinished for at least 2 weeks before I could even look at it again! But with that time away I came back with fresh eyes and was able to see that the issue which that just the head of my sleeve was too big so I unpicked my pieces to just behind the top of the shoulder in the back, took down the top of the sleeve by 2 inches, and when I sewed it all back together the fit was significantly better! With the fit improved, I sandwich the collar between the outer fabric and the lining and sewed it all
together in a bagged lining method, and made sure to do my best when flipping it right side out to try and get crisp corners and top stitched it as neatly as I could.
Luckily for the closure under the bib, the buttons I used were smaller, so I was able to just use my machine to make those buttonholes! As for all of the buttons both big and small, I used cover button kits I pick up at Daiso anytime I'm in a city! I then sewed on the buttons with thread matching the lining in case my stitches showed to the back side they wouldn't be nearly as noticeable.
Lastly were some accessories! To start, hanging from the white loop that wraps around from the back, are long ribbons with tassels on the end. I did end up making the tassels from some fringe and tassel caps and used the satin for the ribbon sewing long 20 inch tubes and pressed my seam to the center back of it. I tapered one end to have a pointed tip that I was able to loop through the top of the tassel and stitched by hand to secure it and then the other end was made into a larger loop, so it could just slide onto the white loop on either side.
Lastly we have the hat! I use an existing pointy witch hat pattern in my stash, I started with a layer of a heavy duty interfacing, and stitched a wire to the brim of it so that the hat will hold its shape better before cutting out first the teal piece and then cutting out a separate interfacing piece for the white part of the hat, as well as a scrap piece of gold fabric that also had its own interfacing. All pieces sewn to the teal while still flat. Once the main seam was sewn and the lining with stitched to the bottom edge, I left it myself a small gap in the lining to flip it right side out and did my best to press it flat and clean before stitching on the decorative button on the front and topping it off with a large gold tassel!
I can't wait for the weather to cool off so I can be all snuggly in this cape! Not to mention it's versatile enough that I can easily cosplay Coco or any of the other girls from the Atelier with just a swap of a wig and shoes!
It looks so cute
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