I’ve just had a whirlwind of an experience with Avatar: The Last Airbender. Being that I go through tv shows like nobody’s business and that Avatar is only three seasons of twenty minute episodes…Let’s just say that I had finished it before too long. AND absolutely and irrevocably fallen in love with it. NO SHAME. So I decided to make a costume. Cause that’s what I do when I love stuff. I have a problem in that area.

At first I was thinking Suki (with the hopes of finding my Sokka at a con ;)) or Katara…But as I was looking around, I saw some pretty amazing lady Aang cosplays and I thought WHY THE HECK NOT. Plus, with Jinora’s part in LoK becoming much more important, this costume could easily be used for her to. And thus, it began.

Aang wears quite a lot of very different outfits throughout the show so I settled on the classic airbender outfit he wears in most episodes (at least at the beginning). If you’re having a little trouble remembering, it looks a little something like this:

What a cutie!

This was probably the most complicated costume I’ve done as of yet when it comes to the amount of different parts. I did the shirt, pants, leggings, and orange overshirt/cape-thing all seperately. Here are the materials I used:

-Brown leggings (with feet!)

-Black mini socks (the kind you wear with flats..)

-Black t-shirt

-Orange t-shirt

-2 or 3 metres of *stretchy* yellow fabric (I bought three but had a lot left over)

-1 metre of orange fabric (it has to match the orange t-shirt…the the t-shirt has to match the fabric)

-Blue body paint

PANTS:

-I took the yellow fabric, folded it in half and held it up to my waist. I took a pen and marked on the fabric where it hit the side of my hip on both sides so I knew how wide I should cut. Also, I marked where I wanted the pants to fall, which was just under my knees.

-I cut a big square out of the fabric with the hip measurements marking the top two corners, and the length of my hip to just under my knees being the length of the square.

-I then cut a triangle out of the bottom, as pictured below. The size of the triangle is based on your own personal preference and leg size and waist size and what not so start small (you can always cut it bigger, but you can’t make it smaller!)

-I then sewed up the sides and hemmed the inside of the triangle.

-Next I added the orange waistband. I took the orange t-shirt and cut a strip off the bottom. I measured around my waist and cut it to the right size.

-I folded the strip over, sewed along the bottom, turned in inside out, and sewed the ends together. If that totally confused you, I explained it a bit better in my Merida cosplay tutorial.

-So that the waistband would be stretchy, I switched my sewing machine from the straight stitch to the one that looks like a zigzag made out of a dotted line (I have no idea what it’s called, sorry!) This was my first time trying anything stretchy and this stitch worked REALLY well.

-If you’re a sewing pro, you’ll know how to do this better than I did, but I’ll try my best to explain my makeshift way of doing the stretchy bands. I laid the yellow pants and orange band on top of each other just like you would when you’re sewing anything. Then I held the yellow fabric firmly while stretching the orange band as far as it would stretch. While holding it like that, I sewed. Once I’d gone a few inches, I readjusted and sewed the next few inches. It’s pretty slick once you get the hang of it!

-I then made two black bands out of the black t-shirt for the bottom of the pant legs. I sewed them on with the same method as the orange waistband, except I left a gap on the inside so the pants open up and flow a bit.

SHIRT:

-For the shirt, I used a pattern that I made for my Stargate dress: I explained a bit about it in that post. I traced the sleeves from a relatively baggy shirt that I owned. If you don’t want to risk fooling around with making your own patterns, any t-shirt or tunic pattern will work just fine.

OVER SHIRT/CAPE-THING:

-For the cape…thing I used two layers of orange fabric simply because the fabric I had that was the shade of orange I wanted was transparent so I put a different shade of orange underneath.

-I started by doubling the orange fabric and cutting out a big semicircle (the diameter being a couple inches longer than the length of my shoulders). I then cut out a rough neckhole and the slit down the front.

-Since I completely freehanded this, it took a lot of putting on and taking off and adjustments and pinning and stitch ripping to get it just right, Just be patient!

-I then hemmed the edges.

-The yellow collar proved to be quite a little predicament. It took a lot of hmming and hawing but eventually I figured it out.

-I laid the main orange cape over top of the yellow fabric (doubled over). I cut along the neckline and then straight up beyond the neckline for about two inches on each side. I then took the top layer of the yellow fabric I had just cut, flipped it up and used it as a template for the upper half. That’s incredibly confusing and I apologize. Here’s pictures:

-I sewed the two yellow collar pieces to the neckline of the orange cape

-Aaaaaaand after many more adjustments and pins and ons and offs, it turned out like this:

LEGGINGS:

-LOL jk you don’t need to do anything to the leggings….except buy them. And wear them

-Here’s what the mini socks look like:

MORE BANDS:

-Finally I made six more bands out of the t-shirts:

~two orange for my elbows, two orange for my wrists, and two orange for my ankles.

And VOILA! There you have it. Put all those pieces together, slap on some blue arrows, and think up some epic poses and you have an Aang cosplay. Off you go; bend those elements. You got this.

Don’t forget the arrow tattoos! Otherwise people will think you’re that unfortunate child who didn’t inherit the airbending abilities…..And nobody wants that.

Oh and one more thing….remember to wear bathing suit bottoms or something over your leggings. I was scarred by too many crosslegged Aangs with only seethrough tights on. Not cool.

Kristy

P.S. If you try this costume and have trouble deciphering my incredibly awful attempt at explaining how I did this, just shoot me a comment and I’ll try to help!