Nausicaa is a princess of the Valley of the Wind who loves all creatures and things, and wants to keep them safe. She’s an active person, flitting around from the forests, to an underground secret garden, to helping villagers, to flying around the poisoned forests. She’s the hero of her environmental tale, and is one of my favorite Miyazaki heroines (okay… I love all of them).
Her costume in the movie is appropriate for winter, so when I was planning this for a summer convention I needed to think about the circumstances.
I decided that a 3/4 sleeve tunic would work, and leggings, with sandals. The idea was to skip the gloves and boots for the heat, and at the time I decided to skip the flare gun rifle.
I made the tunic using one of my Closet Case Pattern Nettie hacked T-shirts by making the alterations in the image above. Basically, I moved the hem about 12 inches lower and made a hip curve for it, so it would still lie close to my body at the side seams (This does leave me with a large amount of pooling at my lower back, but I’m choosing to ignore that). The neckline alteration was a bit trickier. First I brought the shoulder seam in a smidge and then curved it up. Then I curved the neckline down so that it would be against the fold when I cut it out.
The front and back were cut out of some lightweight blue heathered jersey, and a facing for each was cut too that runs down half of the length of the tunic. These were sewn together at the neckline, and then were treated as the same from then on, so they’d both be sewn into the armscye. I did have to test the opening on the neck to make sure I could pull the tunic on, and lowered it a bit.
The leggings are made from a white rayon spandex jersey (so soft!) and I used the Cake Patterns Espresso Leggings pattern for them. Simple, quick, comfy. The belt was a length of navy wide elastic that I sewed onto this neat belt buckle I got in NYC one summer.
I used the sandals that I made for Kaylee, but they got thrown out as soon as I got home from that first DragonCon because they didn’t fit well… The next time I’m pretty sure I used some sport sandals that I’ve had for the past couple of years.
The final piece of the initial puzzle was the plushie! Nausicaa has a furry friend named Teto, who is a fox-squirrel, and I made a plushie of him! Lots of on-the-go pattern making and altering for that one. You can read more about Teto and some of the other Miyazaki plushies I made for friends in this post here!
