Greetings!! Today I’m sharing the “ADVICE” cosplay/birthday request I recently made Azriella for her 14th birthday!😱😱😱 It really doesn’t seem like it’s been 10 years since we’ve moved to Portland, let alone my then soon-to-be-4-year-old now hitting this milestone! Seems like only a little while ago I was making that Rainbow Dash Dress for her 5th birthday!😭😭😭

Around Easter, she informed me (upon seeing Sephira’s outfit) that she does not require dresses, so I thought, when her birthday comes around, I’ll be sure to do something with pants instead. Then around May, Taemin had his last solo performance online before his mandatory enlistment (sigh we all miss him every day!) and there were, of course, some absolutely eye-catching fashion featured throughout the concert. Towards the middle/end, he revealed a love stage of his soon-to-be final music video/album before his 22-month break from entertainment, entitled ADVICE.

…

It completely shook us all.

The song focuses on unsolicited advice and the harsh criticisms he has endured over the past 13 years of being an idol and how he will follow his own advice… to not be labeled or told he should be something different from what he wants to be, etc. It’s about being pulled in different directions and trying to stay true to who you are and make your own decisions. (hence the black and white and chess board theme). It’s a really evocative song, and the music video features not only his talents as the unequivocably best dancer in KPOP (and beyond) but also his talents as a classical pianist, and, oh yeah, the fashion and visuals ARE ABSOLUTELY INSANE OMG, I CAN’T STRESS ENOUGH HOW MUCH WE ADORE THE VIDEO! If you don’t want to get into k-pop I get it, but if you are interested in watching one of the most amazing Korean artists of the 21st century, seriously check him out. This video that he featured during the concert, Just Me and You, is so thought-provoking and mesmerizing that it moves me to tears almost every time from just watching it! I get so emotional over what a true artist he is, in every sense of the word. We are literally marking the days until he returns to the spotlight!!!!

The whole concert and promotion for ADVICE had us on a rollercoaster of feelings since it was incredible but bittersweet since he’d be suddenly leaving by the month’s end… but back to us watching the concert. As soon as the lights came upon him in this bold, duo-toned, black and white suit with an optical illusion checkerboard shirt and tie, we all let out a gasp. Sephira immediately screamed “OMG DIBS. MOM PLEASE MAKE THAT FOR ME!!!!😩🥺” However I looked at Azriella, who loves Taemin as well but just isn’t as vocal about it as her little sister, and asked if she liked it/would you want that look for your birthday outfit. See, her favorite colors have been black and white (and rainbow) for about a year now and this look seemed right up her alley. She was meek in voicing that she loved at first (and Sephira was actively bummed) but once Sephira conceded, she was beaming about it! I knew it would be an insane task to pull off but just the thought of her in it was enough for me to throw rationality to the wind and proclaim that this would be her birthday look this year!

Let it be known that we are in no way affiliated with SHINee or any of its members or SM Entertainment whatsoever. We’re just shawols sharing our love of SHINee through the handmades we make on a regular basis. ❤

The Shirt

Although I’ve made the Laramie Shirt PDF Pattern by Hey June several times in the past, I think I’d only done it once for Azriella. It’s one of the best, skill-building patterns I’ve had the pleasure of making and it’s always nice to have a pattern that you can trust is always going to fit right and be easy to understand. I did have to alter the collar a little bit to incorporate extra width for a neckline button (in the future, I will raise the neckline as well) but that was the only edit.

The really brain explosion was figuring out that fabric pattern and digitially drawing it out in Illustrator, one rectangle at a time😵. It’s the Damier Shirt by Louis Vuitton and it’s literally an optical illusion. Part of my was absolutely freaking stoked to be marking off one of my bucket list items, designing an optical illusion fabric (well, I really want to do something Magic Eye someday as well), but the other part of me was mentally zapped whenever I stared at the print for more than 5 mins. And that’s where my little puzzle genius comes in. At some point early on, I called upon her to help me out with this and she happily obliged. We took a shot of the back of the shirt, and she proceeded to find the pattern of the boxes first, then the repeat (which was HUGE BTW omg, for those who know about pattern repeating, this was a monster!), and then she gave me indicators about which ones were flipped or rotated (yes, she is amazing). The picture on the far right is my finished block, yes, that’s the size of the repeat, minus the gold watermarking “sew chibi designs” I added in like the original. We got 2 years of it made in cotton lawn from Spoonflower. All in all, it took about a solid week of painstaking, mind-numbing, “my brain hurts”, pattern drafting, but in the end I think it came out pretty damn close to the original.

The really brain explosion was figuring out that fabric pattern and digitially drawing it out in Illustrator, one rectangle at a time😵. It’s the Damier Shirt by Louis Vuitton and it’s literally an optical illusion. Part of my was absolutely freaking stoked to be marking off one of my bucket list items, designing an optical illusion fabric (well, I really want to do something Magic Eye someday as well), but the other part of me was mentally zapped whenever I stared at the print for more than 5 mins. And that’s where my little puzzle genius comes in. At some point early on, I called upon her to help me out with this and she happily obliged. We took a shot of the back of the shirt, and she proceeded to find the pattern of the boxes first, then the repeat (which was HUGE BTW omg, for those who know about pattern repeating, this was a monster!), and then she gave me indicators about which ones were flipped or rotated (yes, she is amazing). The picture on the far right is my finished block, yes, that’s the size of the repeat, minus the gold watermarking “sew chibi designs” I added in like the original. We got 2 years of it made in cotton lawn from Spoonflower. All in all, it took about a solid week of painstaking, mind-numbing, “my brain hurts”, pattern drafting, but in the end I think it came out pretty damn close to the original.

The Pants

While the shirt was a totally predetermined element, I needed to actually look for patterns for the rest of the outfit. Sadly, my little girl grew up a lot in the past year and she went from being a kid stuck in a size 2T width for about 4 years of her life to surpassing her age/size by 2 years, so we have graduated to adult-sized patterns now! I hardly ever sew for myself so I don’t have a plethora of patterns in my arsenal. I researched slim-fitting trouser patterns and came across the Sasha Pants by Closet Core Patterns. It wasn’t difficult to alter the pattern to accommodate the required color blocking so that was a plus. Since it was a new pattern to me, I made a muslin to make the sizing perfect. I was surprised that fixing a short crotch seam was as easy as adjusting the seam allowance by 1/4” but there it was, sorcery, right before my eyes!

I wish that the pieces for the pants would have been layered because I loathe trying to discern which line is mine when they get all stacked on top of each other. I did appreciate that the pattern came with a hemline for capri length and, since she’s still growing, that happened to fit her to the ankle perfectly. She fits the size 4 like a glove, and I can see myself using this pattern lots of times in the future for both of us! The instructions were clear, meaning they were easy to follow and execute. The zip fly part which is always my most cringy part aside from putting in welt pockets, was a breeze and reflected the instructions to a T. One caveat, if there is one, is that she mentions the darts should stop before the bottom edge of the welts but that’s not mentioned until you are just about ready to cut open the welt, so arguably a little late for my taste but I can just make a note to check that beforehand in the future. We love love love the fit. Another bonus of moving on to adult patterns is larger seam allowances. I never appreciated this as much as I did the last couple of times I made a certain style of pants and how I would have loved having that extra wiggle room for better pants fitting. The two-toned pants look so professional and polished; we love them so much!

The Cropped Blazer

The devil is in the details as they say, and this is where things got challenging. It took ages for me to even find a blazer that looked feasibly like Taemin’s but I got pretty close with, surprisingly, another Closet Core pattern: the Jasika Blazer. This pattern is so intense. I used interfacing styles I’d never even heard of before (and fell in love with!), and the absolute most difficult part was editing a very technical pattern, a blazer, which I’d only sewn once before semi-successfully (and once a total fail). To say I was intimidated would be a massive understatement. I made an initial muslin to just get a feel for the pattern and to actually mark off where the color-blocking had to go. I usually do all of my editing digitally but, because I was unfamiliar with how everything went together, it wasn’t going to be that easy. I took a sharpie and drew where the breaks should be because this pattern was not intended to be split in half the way I needed it to.

There was a lot of editing, a lot of trial and error and unpicking pieces and altering and reinserting them, etc… it seemed like an uphill battle the entire time. I made a second muslin with all of the pieces this time to test out the edits I made. Most of the pieces all went together perfectly but for some reason, no matter how I started over or tried to fix, I couldn’t get the back armscye to ease in properly and I hand basted it in and everything. The pieces just didn’t go together the way I wanted. But despite that, everything else went pretty well, some room for improvement for the next time. I was pleased the welt came out flawlessly, but I have become proficient at welts since the patterns I’ve drafted in the past. I added in the sleeve cap but then took it out because the way his shoulders are sewn, there’s a visible tuck and when I did it, with the shoulder pads in place, it became way too bulky. The other point of bother was the edits I made to offset the lining from the main fabric. I hadn’t drafted in the difference in length for the lapel facings so I had to work some magic and make my own facings to get the looks I was hoping for. Is it ideal? No, but did it work? Yes. I think the overall fit came out great (I made the size 2) and the color-blocking came out relatively successful. Next time, it’ll be nice to make one that isn’t color-blocked in half😅.

The Tie, the Mask, and the Shoes

The final elements really tie things together don’t you think?😂😂😂 I have always wanted to make a tie for my girls but never had the opportunity really present itself until now. I couldn’t find a checkerboard brocade anywhere so I had to make my own. I used black broadcloth as a base and black iron-on vinyl and my Cricut cutter to draft out and transfer the pattern to the pattern pieces. Speaking of pattern pieces, I used the Father’s Day Tie by Purl Soho, altering the length to be somewhere between the little boys and the men’s lengths. I couldn’t believe that tie took most of a day to make but it did, complete with a back-of-the-needle, repeated finger stabbing from ladder stitching the tie shut. It looked pretty amazing I think!
Next, I made a mask for her out of the leftover fabric because she wore the button-down shirt for her first day back to in-person school. It looks so cool and instantly became her favorite mask.

Finally, we bought black pointed boots which I altered to be white in the back to match Taemin’s.

We went down to Southeast Portland by the river to take pictures. I usually seek out the most colorful or visually impactful murals but, considering that I needed a stark black and white background, we had to search a little harder. We settled upon the Glass Lab off of MLK BLVD. at sunset. I loved the look of the sun coming down but I also loved the black and white edits too! I couldn’t stick to just one style! We finished up with a few pics in from of the wall we used for this photoshoot. All the while, Jon had us laughing and Sephira was constantly interjecting with comments on how Azriella looked like a model plus she was constantly trying to incorporate one of their best friends on Facetime, Harper (Lauren Dahl’s daughter)! It was a photoshoot with a lot of lols, even though it was a very serious photoshoot.

In the end, I absolutely love the way it all came together and so does she. I look back on it and can’t even believe I pulled it off, despite all of the obstacles. She feels totally empowered which means a lot. I’m constantly trying to instill confidence in her because she has been picked on and bullied so much because she’s a little different and a little weird (just like her mamma and daddy and little sisters). She is such a perfect human and I just love taking pictures of her and sharing them here because I find her absolutely stunning, and I love watching her face light up upon seeing how the pictures came out!

If you think this is even the last time you’ll be seeing an “ADVICE” cosplay from me, you are wrong😂: remember how I said Sephira had called dibs on this outfit before offering it to Azriella? Yeah well the way I sated her was to offer up one of the other looks of his as a Halloween costume offering which she happily accepted. I can’t wait to get started on all of the drafting for that! It’s going to be an amazing Halloween!

Thank you so much for reading about our “ADVICE” look! If you want to read about more of our SHINee handmade cosplay, check out the new page on the top of our website or click on any of the looks on our sidebar! Hope you all have a dazzling day!🥰