Y’ahtzi Funh ~ Christmas Miqo’te
Final Fantasy XIV

Inspiration: FFXIV is an amazingly fun and addictive MMORPG! After con season ended this year, I filled the hours normally spent sewing with constant gaming. Y’ahtzi Funh was the name of my Miqo’te avatar and I really wanted to cosplay as her. Since I love the holidays, I came up with the idea of designing my own Christmas variant, which I based heavily on the starter Miqo’te outfit. This is what I came up with.

Materials/Construction Details: My original thought for the top and skirt was to make them out of velvet, but I knew that material wouldn’t hold well in pleats, so I switched to seude. I drafted my own patterns for the top and skirt. To give the top more structure, I made a layer out of canvas between the lining and the right side of the fabric, similar to how I made my bunny suit, though much simpler.

The crazy belt design I took straight from the FFXIV art. I made mine out of vinyl and replaced the metal studs with poinsettia flower buttons to make it more festive. The giant butt bow is made out of a sheer snowflake foil fabric overlayed on white cotton. I used cotton batting in the bow to make it puffy and light interfacing in the tails to help them keep a good shape.

The sleeves are made out of cotton with light interfacing and several layers of tulle to help with the puff. Instead of brown leather like the original sleeves, I opted for a black knit to keep with my color scheme and to help the sleeves stay in place better. Once they were finished I stitched the red silk cording on.

I bought the thigh highs as they are, though I did replace the bows with handmade suede ones to match the skirt and added the pompoms. The cuffs on the boots are simply fur tubes I made. The choker is made of velvet with a holly leaves button and large bell. I jingled every time I moved!

I have made many cat tails since I started cosplaying, but this is the first time I ever made a fluffy tail. Since I wanted the fur to all go in a direction that made sense, I cut my pattern into several pieces so that once sewn together, the fur would follow the curve of the tail. I wanted to use the same fur for the ears so that the color would match, but the ear fur is a lot shorter, so I actually used a beard trimmer to shorten the fur to an appropriate length. I sewed the the ears directly onto the hat.

I shopped in the miniature tree ornaments section in Michael’s for a lot of my flourishes, such as the stars I used for my earring and all the red and silver sparkly flowers found on the costume. As a final touch, I added yellow feathers to the hat to represent chocobo feathers.

Wig: The wig is a Magnum-XL from Arda is ash blonde. I sewed several powder blue wefts into the front of the wig to give it blue highlights similar to my avatar in the game.

Prop: I bought a large candy cane lawn ornament from the dollar store just to hold. Since I play as a Dragoon in the game, I thought it would be fun to pretend it was my lance!