Gloves
Byakuya wears a sort of glove on both hands, which I had to recreate since I couldn’t find the real thing. I’d never made gloves before, though I have had some occasion to cut up premade gloves for various reasons. I didn’t really want to make gloves from scratch, but luckily I found some that were easily modified.
Materials
--So-called “wrist braces” that covered wrist, palm, and thumb, purchased at Ichiban-kan in Japantown, San Francisco
--Some scraps of white fabric
--Sharpie (black permanent marking pen)
--Fabric marker, light brown color
The “wrist braces” I bought because they were cheap, white, and stretchy, fairly thick, and covered up my wrists including part of my forearm, but they required a lot of modification. Additionally, I might note, I don’t know how they would support someone’s wrists, as they were pretty loose, awkward sort of gloves.
I cut off quite a bit of the gloves until I had approximated what Byakuya wears. I made sure, however, to keep a main structural elastic band across the palm at the first crease of my fingers, to keep the part of the glove over the back of my hand from flopping about. In the anime the gloves are held to the hand by one tie that goes around Byakuya’s middle finger, but I felt that would allow the glove to be too floppy, so I choose a different—though inaccurate—method.
The gloves were too loose, so I used hand stitching to tighten them up, tucking bits under and stitching to make them more snug. I was certain to stitch plentifully to make my alterations secure. I covered all the cut edges of the glove with white fabric, using it like bias tape, folding it over the edge and tucking the raw edges of the fabric under, and then hand-stitching in place.
Byakuya has a couple decorations on the gloves. On the part that covers his wrist and forearm there are actually little—I don’t know what to call them—narrow cuts on both lateral sides. I chose not to do those cuts literally, but instead just sewed some additional white fabric there, tucking the edges under and hand stitching. Also above the middle finger’s knuckle is a little diamond shape. I faked that with some white fabric hand stitched on top, too.
I used a fabric marker, light brown in color, to attempt to disguise the elastic I’d left running across my palm to hold the gloves on.
The day of, wearing them was fine and completely natural. I forgot they were even there. They were kind of comfy, too.
