The reason why there is no kohlrabi printing...

Or the fantastic story of the "mucho macho Andrews"

Well... As it is late already here's a short one:
I'd like to tell you about the fun I had back in June or July when I made the very first yukata nearly completely on my own... Ok, that's an exaggeration... but accept for some advice I sewed it completely on my own and printed the pattern mostly on my own as well.
The cosplay I talk about is this certain version of Gokudera Hayato from KH Reborn!:

Gokudera's alienyukata

It's a version you only see on merchandise. But I somehow liked it a lot and deemed it fitting cause he is so much into the occult, UMAs and aliens.^^ And there was the Japanese festival in Munich... and Juudaime, Yamamoto and aneki who joined me in befitting yukatas as well...

Well... what I sewed turned out very neat and I won't talk much about it cause there are many tutorials out there who can tell you better than me how to sew a yukata.
So we rather start here:

Plz don't mind: The colours look different here!

Ok... so I had just some days left and it would have been impossible to paint all the tiny alien heads by hand as I usually do. Aside from this I thought in one of the two images which exist of this version the alien heads looked as if their saturation varied a lot. Plus this would look more ghostly. So I decided on printing. Luckily I had the opportunity to visit my aneki for that as she had lots of free space and no cats which could have left behind marks of their own on still drying colour...

We had a very funny weekend in fact... although we didn't finish... I originally had thought of using potatoes for the printing. I already had a drawing of the alienhead ready. But... we accidently ate the only potatoe big enough for this and didn't get some of the same size later in the supermarket -.-''''.... Aneki came up with the great idea of trying to use kohlrabi instead! The size wouldn't have been a problem at all then. But... somehow I had trouble with the cutting or... maybe it was due to the structure of the kohlrabi surface. Anyway the printing didn't work well with fabric colour.
Therefore I turned back to using foam craft sheets and more or less succeeded.

It is a little tricky though. The printing strongly seems to depent on the consistency of the colour (and therefore also if added on how much water you use) and also a bit on the pressure. Of course more water increases the transparency. Still it is not always guaranteed that the whole template is really printed... maybe cause the foam is so soft... We decided to put some more paint by hand over the worst alienheads.

Half-finished yukata

Well, in the end as already said the yukata wasn't finished after that weekend and the obi (on which I sewed some decorative ribbons) had also still to be done. But we had lots of fun, naming the alienheads during the process (they are now the "mucho macho Andrews", don't know why o.O) and starting a spontaneous nonsense rpg in between xD. But I got it finished in time for the festival.^^ And I'm not that fed up with my first try at printing. Still, I guess I prefer painting it with a brush in the future as well.
 

Close up of the printing

Obi in production

So... I guess the entry turned out longer than intended. Therefore I'll call it a day. Next time, probably tomorrow I'm either going to write about my first plushie or my new plans and current flash *coughs*.