“I am a Speaker and a scholar of magic. I serve no demon and I do no evil.”
Construction Notes:
Castlevania took us completely by storm. I had never played, nor had any interest in, the Castlevania series before we stumbled upon it on Netflix summer of 2017. 4 episodes later and Toggle Photography and I were completely hooked! The beautiful animation, fun wit, and crazy tight story line made us watch it again and again. It only made sense for us to want to cosplay for it at Katsucon, and pray for a chance of getting canon shots in the snow.
I built both costumes as part of my yearly 30 day Katsucon Countdown, and paid extra attention to Trevor Belmont as his costume had the most details. Later in 2019 I built Alucard to complete the trio!
Quick Jumps:
•Wig
•Wool
•Collar
•Blue Dress
•Belt
•Black Dress
•Shoes
Sypha’s wig is also from Wig is Fashion, a LF808A, which is a lace front in a gorgeous peach orange color. Much like Trevor, I’m really sad I had to cut so much of the fibers off. I used the Got 2b Glued and hair dryer method to give her bangs volume and keep the back of her hair up. My contacts are Gradient Star Blue or Dodo Blue from TTDEYE* depending on when I wore her.
*Since the purchase of these contacts, TTDYE has made some unsightly comments and I no longer buy from them.
The toughest part of Sypha was finding the wool in a color I was happy with. I ended up buying 2 different wools because I wasn’t happy with how dark my first selection was. I’m really glad I found the store Bird Brain Designs, where I purchase 5 yards of pre-shrunk 100% wool in Civil War Blue. I also purchased ½ yard of Bleached White (which is cream in person) for all her diamonds. It has such an amazing weight and drape to it. Plus it kept me really warm at Katsucon! I used a thin black knit with these beautiful little “pulls” in it.
The collar was draped using fleece over a craft foam base to keep the shape standing tall. I duplicated the craft foam base to make a lining for the collar in wool. I then draped the wool to create the outside folds. The weight of the wool was heavier than the fleece, so some areas had to be hand tacked down. I serged the bottom end and then blanket stitched it to the front and back panels of her cloak using matching embroidery thread. The cloak has inset diamonds and are visible from both inside and outside. The white is just attached with a simple topstitch (making sure I tucked in my blue so it wasn’t a raw edge). The rest of the cloak does have a raw edge though.
The blue dress as I am calling it, was free hand drafted off a loose sweater I liked to wear. The sleeves are massive! I cut them short to show off the black sleeves underneath, but I also stitched them in a folded position near my elbow to create depth no matter how I posed. The side skirt just attached to the bottom of the blue dress’s top and the seam is hidden by the belt.
The belt uses the last bit of white fabric I had from my Neo cosplay, which is just a lightly ribbed polyester. The horizontal belt has the ruffles sewn into the back where the separating zipper is. The vertical belt is hand stitched to the bottom of the horizontal belt. The black fabric is the same as the base dress and is top stitched down to the white. I placed a rectangular piece of craft foam in the bottom so it would hold i’s shape a bit better.
The base dress is Butterick 4827. I modified it to have a much shorter skirt, tighter and longer sleeves, and a wider neck. I also eliminated the lacing in the back. The black fabric has so much stretch in it that it’s very easy to put on without any zippers, buttons, etc.
The shoes were sandals purchase off of amazon and recolored with Design Master Colortool. Toggle went back in with acrylic to make it look like worn leather. He sealed it with a clear coat. Toggle also 3D modeled Sypha’s speaker brooch. He used Autodesk Maya and then cleaned it up in Microsoft’s 3D print clean up tool, 3D Builder. There are 3 loops on the back so I was able to sew it directly to the collar. He painted the brooch with Design Master Silver and weathered it in acrylics, sealing it with a satin clear coat.
LilyBat Cosplay 