The the last couple days, I've been working on making the boots for Gaia from Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers. I bought her cosplay from Taobao couple months ago, but it didn't come with the boots, so I went to Goodwill, bought a pair of plain black knee-high boots, and bought some materials to transform it.
Below are the parts I made to transform the boots: a pair of grey layered ruffles, blue gems, front panels, back panels, belts, and six belt loops. The gray ruffles are made out of cotton/polyester fabric, the black pieces are made out of faux leather, and the blue gems are leftovers from my Yue cosplay from Card Captor Sakura.
Once I finished making all the parts shown above, I held them into place using sewing clips to position them. I thought about being proper and sewing them in place, but this is four layers of faux leather I was working with. Including the folded seams along the edges, it would be a total of eight layers. Afraid of breaking my needle, I decided to just glue them together using super glue - I did not quite care for functionality for these parts, anyways!
Once the parts were glued altogether, I then glued them onto the boots and realized... I made the ruffles way too long. I'm not sure why I didn't bother measuring the length of it, but I had no choice but to remake it. As you can see in the reference photo at the top, the ruffles only come half way down to her shin. Mine were coming down all the way to the ankle!
I basically halved the measurements from the first ruffles for the second ones and while I had doubts that they were gonna look far too small, I decided to continue going forth and trust the process. In the end, it turned out quite perfect!
I'm aware Gaia's boots have high heels and while I definitely could have made mine more accurate, I recalled having nerve damage on my feet from wearing high heels for my Yue cosplay (I know he doesn't wear shoes, but I will never be comfortable having my dogs out in public)... And that injury lasted about 2~3 weeks. It was quite scary since I thought it wasn't going to make full recovery. Ever since, I decided I'll never wear high heels. Remember, cosplay is for fun and while I can understand others wanting to be as accurate as possible, make sure to prioritize your health and safety no matter what!
I may consider at least painting the soles silver but otherwise, that's it for the boots! I'm going to go take a look and see if her cravat needs to be remade...
