How I made my Yuri (DDLC) Cosplay

As someone who enjoys story telling games such as Life is Strange and various Telltale games, I very much liked Doki Doki Literature Club. This is my attempt at making a Yuri cosplay for SMASH (Sydney Manga and Anime Show) 2018.

Note: I am very much a beginner cosplayer, I know how to work with a sewing machine and can be crafty, but don't take this article as cosplay advice.

Part 1: Skirt

Typical schoolgirl style skirt, I used this tutorial: http://thecosplaychronicles.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-to-cosplay-pleated-skirt.html

Apologies for the bad lighting for some of the following images, I took them at night in my room which has weak yellow lights.

Measuring out pleats (3 inch then 1 inch) and marking them with a tailor's chalk

Pinned down the stitches, then loosely (as loose as a sewing machine can at least) stitched over to keep the pleats in place

End result of stitching over pleats

Adding the zipper as according to the tutorial

Ironing out the pleats, turns out the fabric I picked doesn't actually stay pleated that well.

Making the waistband, you want to cut roughly your desired waistband width*2 + some overlap/hem on both sides of the waistband and then fold it over.

You also want to make sure your waistband is a bit longer so they overlap where the hook and eye will meet.

(I forgot to take a finished photo of the skirt right as I finished it, but you can see it at the end of this blog)

Part 2: Making the blazer (the hardest part)

Based off this pattern: https://www.burdastyle.com/pattern_store/patterns/batiste-blazer-032013

My old high school textiles teacher warned us against Burda patterns, didn't know why till I tried it. The patttern came with not enough instructions, especially for a beginner like me who's never worked off a pattern (especially not such a complicated pattern) before, it also didn't include seam allowances in the pattern. But if anyone wants a copy contact me and I'll send you the pdf.

The pattern calls for the jacket and the lining to be made separately, i.e. you make the jacket using the jacket fabric desired, then you make an exact copy using lining fabric and 'merge' the two jackets. I am of course, too inexperienced to do it the 'proper' way so I decided its not a big deal if you could see the seams from the inside, and the occasional top stitch from the outside.

What I mean by that I didn't make the jacket the 'proper' way is that I sewed together each component's jacket fabric, lining and interfacing in one go, and piece together the components (front, sides, back, etc) after. This is shown by the picture below with the back piece

Back piece, with pink lining and some jacket facing attached at the top using top stitch

The pattern also wanted 150cm wide fabric, which I couldn't find an exact color for, the color I ended up using is a bit too purple rather than the warm grey tone that the characters in DDLC wears. I'm also using the 'wrong' side of the fabric as the outside since the fabric is satin and I didn't want it to be overly shiny.

Cutting out patterns, I had to get the help of a friend over a Sunday to double my efforts.

 I didn't take many photos during the jacket construction. In the first day I attached the lining, interfacing and jacket fabric together to make each piece, added darts to the main front pieces, and connected them with the side pieces.

Result after 1 day of blazer making (front)

Result after 1 day of blazer making (back)

 Day 2 of blazer making involved attaching the back piece to the front pieces at the shoulder (inserting a shoulder pad inside the lining), attaching the side pieces to the front pieces, and laying out how the collar will connect since the pattern didn't have very good instructions for it.

End result of day 2

 Day 3:

Attaching the collar using top stitch to the back and front pieces

 When I was cutting out the pattern, I was in between 2 sizes and cut it according to the size of the bigger one. As I finished more and more of the bodice, I realised I should have used the smaller size as it had a lot of excess seam allowance when I was pinning the pieces to my dressmaking mannequin.

 I decided to compensate for this by overdo the seam allowance when attaching the side pieces to the back (in most picture references of Yuri, her jacket looks fairly tight).

 Later on I realised I should have just listened to the god damn pattern as after I attached the sleeves, my arms did not have much room to move.

World's most dodgy sleeve attachment.

 Day 4: Finishing touches

Button holes are a lot of fun to make if your sewing machine has the setting for it (and you have a button hole presser foot)

Part 3: Sweater Vest

Based on the references of DDLC that I had, it's arguable whether their sweater is a full sweater or a sweater vest. I decided to just make it a sweater vest (since I didn't have much armpit room in the jacket). Obviously I didn't have time to knit one from scratch, so I found a similar colour sweater to modify

I looked at this tutorial for guidance but didn't end up following it completely: https://www.wikihow.com/Turn-a-Sweater-Into-a-Sweater-Vest

Original sweater, $15 from TEMT

Removing sleeves, pinning them. I finished this with a top stitch using a similar coloured thread

Turned the turtleneck into a v-neck.

 Part 4: Accessories

Couldn't really figure out where to buy Yuri's shoes, so I decided I would just find any plain white shoe and paint the front blue as a 'close enough' option.

Cheap plain white shoes

Cheap plain white shoes, but painted over using blue acrylic paint.

 For her hair clips, I bought some DIY barette bases, a matte purple ribbon, and fixed it all together with hot glue and some cardboard as a base.

I initially tried using a zig zag stitch over the ribbon cut ends to prevent it from fraying, turns out that only makes the ribbon fray faster, guess whats a more efficient solution? I also applied the same technique for the red ribbon all the DDLC girls wear around their shirt collar

Finished product. Made 2 just in case.

Cosplay dry run (day before SMASH)

 Wig from Ebay, very rushed make up and messy bathroom selfie.

My experience - How we started the Inter-University Dota 2 League

It started off all as a strange fantasy that I'd recreate again and again on my daily commute - me, standing on a lecture theater stage at UNSW, introducing the two university teams that will participate in the grand finals (one of them being UNSW of course), before they set off to play a series of intense matches live in front of a live audience.

Or maybe that's a bit too too far-fetched...

Around February 2016, at that time I was the recently appointed Vice president (External) of DotaUNSW (soon to be renamed UNSW Dota Society), my job before that (Media director) consisted exclusively of making cover photos/posters for events. The idea of organizing a inter-university tournament was beyond my experience, and remained untold for a while.

One day I just decided to try to do it. Maybe its because my manager gave me the cliche advice "follow your passion", or that my friend Eric made me write it down on a bright pink sticky note as a new year resolution; either way I got on the computer, and started trying to find contacts who can collaborate on this idea with me.

Sometimes you just have to be brave, after messaging all the email addresses I can find, I joined facebook groups for university societies, then proceeded to ask around for an executive member who can contact me (I learned the hard way that there's also a university in the UK by the name of University of Newcastle). I also joined the COG (community of gamers) forum and continued advertising my idea and asking if people can help me, an admin of COG got in contact with me straight away and was extremely helpful. COG were happy to let us borrow their LAN event and help us with getting sponsors.  You'd be surprised how much you can do if you just go out there and ask for help.

With each day that went by, the tournament became more and more consolidated: sponsors started providing us with prizes, many people became interested in joining the tournament. Best of all, instead of me trying hard to find universities to contact, they started getting in contact with me to let them join! Nothing can describe how much excitement I was feeling, knowing one small idea was turning into a real tournament with a $1000 prize pool.

I only got busier and busier as the UNSW qualifiers started: 12 teams had signed up, scheduling matches according to people's availability became my new nightmare.

Picture above: Schedule for the first day of round robin, we had 4 games going on concurrently (Thank god there were people happy to give up a few hours of their time to help me host these, especially shout out to Tim who was already experienced in organizing tournaments, yet happy to help out a small tournament)

Did I spend a lot of time administrating matches when I could be doing other things? yes, but it was worth it in every way. I enjoyed watching the matches, especially during moments like these:

(I really like big team fight ultimates)

The tournament also gave me the opportunity to try my hand at being a caster, I felt nervous and was unable to coordinate with the Miles (the Dota coordinator of Usyd at that time, now Vice President) when it came to pair casting, but with practice I started being able to complement him as a co-caster and making it as enjoyable as I can for the people watching on twitch.

Most importantly, the tournament allowed me to meet and talk to the players and other organizers, it expanded my social circle and bought the DotaUNSW community closer together (or so I hope).
All the frustration I felt scheduling matches and doing other mundane tasks, was made worth it by moments like this:

We held the IUDL itself at cyber legends cafe, they were extremely accommodating to let us book computers at last minute notice (due to an emergency change of plans I'd rather not go on about). There were 5 universities that ended up attending the finals (UNSW, Usyd, UoW, ANU and UTS). I was able to meet the other organizers in real life, we spent half the day freaking out over the emergency situation, and the other half hanging out together, eating food and watching our teams play out their matches.

The grand finals were held online, I got to cast for the IUDL one last time and it was the highlight of my week. We had people tuning in from different universities watching the intense best of 3 series. Its not quite the glamorized fantasy I imagined in my spare time, but it was a dream come true.


I will be honest this made me laugh (its as friendly and readable as twitch chat gets)