Tutorial: Yasha's bodice - Critical Role
I’ve gotten a lot of questions regarding my Yasha bodice, so I decided to make this post and hopefully it’ll answer your questions and help when creating your own Yasha cosplay. It’s actually not an overly complicated piece, you just need a lot of patience for pressing and hand sewing.
I used a thick faux suede fabric made for furniture for the bodice. I’ve worked with the same fabric before and I love the texture of it. It’s also a real pain to sew
when there’s more than two layers. Normally I put lining in almost all of my cosplays, but this would have become very think and extra warm so I opted out for this particular cosplay.
If you want to work in stretch, I’m not sure how that’ll work with the method I used for the braided front panel. And please remember that this isn’t the only way to do it, it’s just how I decided to.
Now, let’s get to it!
Pattern
I always start my cosplays by sitting down to look at references and sketch out how I want to make it. To me, the bodice has a front panel with braiding, followed by another slim panel, followed by a panel with braiding and finally a side panel. The back was open to interpretation, so I decided to just do four panels in total as it wasn’t going to be visible most of the time (and I didn’t want to do any more braids). As I actually started sewing, I also decided to have the zipper be in the back instead of the side.
Then I moved on to patterning. You could do this in several ways- draping on the stand or wrapping yourself in plastic foil and tape and then have someone draw the lines directly on (you can find tutorials on this). I took an old leotard pattern that I had copied from a basic H&M piece. Leotard pattern laid flat, I made sure it had the right measurement on the waist and chest. Then, dividing it down the middle, I started to draw the panels. Afterwards I made a mockup to take it in where it needed to – specifically the curve on the bust and in the back – and transferred those modifications back onto the pattern. I wanted to make sure it was very form fitting.
Above is the end pattern: front to the left, back to the right. As I was finishing, it ended up being a little too tight in the back, so I added two extra panels, each 3 cm wide. That’s the good thing about this bodice, you can just add an extra piece and it’ll fit the look.
Sewing – braids, braids and more braids
Then came all the fun which consisted mostly of me burning my fingers on a hot iron, stabbing myself repeatedly and bleeding all over the costume. Just barbarian stuff.
Along with cutting out the fabric pieces with 1 cm seam allowence, I also cut 10 strips for piping, each 3 cm wide. I decided to do the piping between the panels because it would hide the fact that the braided parts in the front would be sewn on separately by hand. Otherwise it probably wouldn’t blend together as well.
Before I could sew the whole thing together, I had to make the front panel. Instead of doing braids, I made small fabric strips that would interlace. I cut out long strips of fabric (each 1,5 cm wide) and set to ironing them so they would look neat and clean.
I used a tip I found online (I’ve lost the original link to the video) where you place two needles on your ironing board and slide the strips underneath. It saved me a bunch of trouble!
You can see what the finished strips looked like on the photo below to the right.
After I was satisfied with the position of the strips, I pinned and sewed them on so they wouldn’t move.
In the same spirit, I did the strips for the front braids – they are 6 stranded braids so in total I made 12 strips that each measuring 1,2 cm in width when pressed. I made sure to take into account how big the panel was to make sure the braid was the perfect size to cover it.
After everything was positioned correctly, I sewed it together – the braids by hand and the rest on the machine.
Making sure that the 6 stranded braids were secure, I cut off the excess and left the stands to hang on the bottom to give it the ragged look. I also added an edge on the bottom starting next to the braid- this was also hand sewn.
Afterwards I put in the zipper and the last missing pieces were the braided straps.
Now it’s time to cut more fabric strips for the top braids. The braids that run along mine are 4 stranded and measure 1 cm when pressed. The straps are normal 3 stranded braids.
As for the ring, I went to a hobby store and bought a wooden one that I spray painted with silver chrome and attached the braids to before pinning it and sewing it all on by hand.
As you can see, I also left two straps in the middle panel to be attached over the center piece. All the braids were attached, any excess cut off and sewn on by hand.
And that’s it- time to put on the rest of your barbarian gear and rage!
I hope this was helpful and answered some questions for any of you looking to do a Yasha cosplay.
Photo by Charles Darrell / JCM Photography