My first shot at the whole costume armor thing. Developed most of my methods and ideas during the course of this project. I won't go into detail on the armor, as I've given it a pretty good write-up in my Armoring Tutorial.

Underneath Chris' armor, she wears a uniform. The brown trousers and long-sleeved shirt that she wears under her uniform I made using patterns I generated with my Patternmaster software.

The pinkish underskirt (which sort of resembles a schoolgirl fuku): I made this by cartridge-pleating a length of heavy fabric and sewing it to a waistband.

The orange uniform consists of a sleeveless bodice and long, flaring skirt. I based the design for it off of some pictures I saw of Chris sans armor in the Suikoden 3 manga. I stiffened the skirt with batting (to make it flare out more) and I created the gold decoration and trimming on the skirt by applique-ing gold stretchy fabric to it and sewing black midi-trim over the gold to create the geometric design.

The leggings were vinyl (which turned out to be a problem. After making them, I soon discovered that the enamel paint I was using to paint the armor liked to rub off on vinyl. So I had to keep the leggings and the armor separate when I was storing and transporting them.)

I made the sword by altering a plastic prop sword with plastic-covered foam and painted sculpey.

The wig was a pain to make (as all wigs with ponytails are). I also can't braid to save my life so, the wig didn't turn out as nice as I hoped it would. (But with all that shiny armor, it was not like anyone was noticing my hair...)

Version 2