COSTUME INFO: Sakura Kinomoto (Cardcaptor Sakura) - red intro dress

Bio: Sakura is the main character in Cardcaptor Sakura, a manga by CLAMP that later was made into anime. She is a cheerful little girl that likes sports, sweets and playing with her friends. One day she opens a book in the basement and out flies a bunch of cards. The cards protector wakes and order Sakura to catch all the cards. To help her with the capturing she gets a magic wand and Kerberos (the cards protector).

Why?: It was the only anime at that point that I had seen whole. I really like it as it was different from the other magic girls stories and there was a bunch of costumes to chose from, since Sakura got a different outfit to almost every card she captured.

Construction: I've got a constructed pattern from my measurements so I started with that and made changes. I added a princess line to the dress as well as the blouse. The blouse also got very big arms in which I made a canal so I could tie a ribbon in. The skirts are circle skirts, but on the dress I also added gores in the shape of triangulars to make it even wider (something it really wouldn't need).

The blouse is made in a white stretchy cotton/elastin mix, that is really comfortable to wear. The underskirts are of plain cotton and sewn on eyelet fabric. The dress is made of a red/green twotoned taffeta that I kind of  hated for a while after it all the time didn't work that way I wanted, but I'm all over that. To the hat and the red details I used a darker red polyester fabric. The shoes and the socks were bought.

I never got to finish the costume, there where some small details that still needed fixing but since I've retired the costume I don't think it will ever be finished.

Convention Info: I've myself have only worn this costume at one convention, KodachiKun '07. It was my first convention and cosplay so I was really nervous when the one in charge of the cosplay masquerade asked me if I wanted to join since there was so little people that had entered. Of cause I said yes, and that was my debut on the cosplay scene. Even thou the costume wasn't finished at that time there was still people who recognised the costume and that was all I needed to continue on with cosplay.