Apr 21, 2026

Ideas & Inspirations

Make the Witch Hat Atelier Coco Cosplay With Me

Baby Lock Ambassador and resident cosplay pro Skyler shares their take on a Coco cosplay from Witch Hat Atelier. Follow Skyler's creative process, which includes sketching, creating a sewing pattern, making a custom lace pattern, sewing, and adding custom touches such as pleats and buttons. Garment makers, fashion designers, and cosplayers like Skyler love using the Baby Lock Accomplish 2, because it can handle a variety of tricky fabrics.

Witch Hat Atelier is a manga written and illustrated by Kamome Shirahama. The moment I saw her illustrations I became completely obsessed. The way her illustrations look like magic was very inspiring. Going into this project I wanted to make an outfit that was just as magical. I was already thinking of lace and texture to incorporate into her design.

It started with patterning and constructing the cape. I needed to get this base shape done to understand how much space I could use for decoration. Once it was on the dress form, I began to drape some spare lace I already had, but found it overwhelming. There were so many directions I could take! Fortunately, I had already started the hat, so I used that as my North Star for the cloak’s design.

At first, I wasn’t sure if the white lace was right, so I experimented with dyeing it blue to help it blend into the cloak. But then I stopped myself, who wants intricate details that disappear? If I’m going to pour that much time into decorating, I want it to be visible! A huge thank you to my friends for helping me talk that through and confirming that the original white was the way to go.

To clear my head and narrow down a design, I took a hard break from the physical draping and fiddling with trims. I sat down with a sketchbook and began letting my ideas flow. Sometimes you just have to get those ideas out of your head to focus. Once I finally settled on a design, I began online shopping for some fabric that would work. I found this beautiful white lace fabric.

My process for creating a custom lace pattern is all about deconstruction. I take my fabric, cut it into a multitude of pieces, and then rearrange them to create the design I have in mind. I’ve included photos to show the process, from the initial full lace pieces to how I cut them into sections and applied them to the cape. This is a particularly tedious process because with detailed lace like this cutting through threads can make the material extremely delicate. I often find myself having re-sew beads that fall off or finish the cut edges so the lace stitching doesn’t unravel.

To secure the lace, I rely on my Baby Lock Accomplish 2 and its free-motion quilting foot. While I did have to hand-sew a few sections where the beading was especially heavy, I am constantly impressed by how well the Accomplish breezes through these irregular, textured surfaces to deliver beautiful, consistent seams. I even added a little extra decorative stitching with the machine. I find sewing off and into the fabric adds my own flair and seamlessly integrates the materials into one. It makes the lace feel more a part of the fabric than it was before. You have all these levels of stitch thickness and they all play a part in the final piece.

At this stage, I was getting pretty excited, so I started adding all my leftover lace to see how they’d look across the entire cape.

From there, I began layering in and fine-tuning the details on the collar and the other components of the costume until everything felt cohesive. Honestly, the hardest part of the entire project is forcing myself to stop! There is always one more detail you could add, it sometimes feels like endless play.

So I stopped here and moved myself to the next garment in this build which is the white underdress. At first glance it looked very simple, on a second inspection I realized just how detailed the little dress is.

The design features these stunning, intricate pleats across the chest and back. I had to laugh when cutting my pattern pieces because look at these crazy shapes!

Here is an abridged look at my process: I started by drafting the dress flat, keeping it simple to ensure the fit was perfect before adding any complexity. Once I was happy with the base, I mapped out my cut lines to delineate the pleated sections from the flat ones. I then moved to scrap fabric, adding my seam allowances and "truing up" the pieces to ensure the final garment would drape exactly as intended.

To handle the pleats, I used a clever trick with craft paper: I folded the paper exactly where I wanted the pleats to fall, laid my pattern piece on top, and traced the shape. When you unfold that paper, you’re left with the full, flat shape of the pleated piece. I used these templates to cut my fashion fabric, then used the paper as a guide for folding the pleats down perfectly.

The Baby Lock Accomplish 2 really had its work cut out for it on this stage. The fabric was incredibly dainty, meaning there was zero room for error. It handled the job beautifully. I especially loved having such precise control over my stitch settings; using a very tight stitch kept everything secure and almost completely invisible.

With everything pleated I finished the construction of the garment into the dress you see now and added the final details! Adding the custom-made fabric buttons felt like the perfect finishing touch. I had fun incorporating a bit of the cape's lace onto the dress.

I thought it really helped tie everything together in a seamless, cohesive way.

Next came the final element: Finishing the hat. (You can find my full tutorial on how to build it here.

I used the same blue fabric I used for the cape, and the same white fabric I used from the dress. I’m a big believer in repeating materials across a build; it’s the best way to ensure the entire ensemble feels like a unified piece. Especially with how many textures I use on one build if they were all different they would feel more disjointed and chaotic. Not that this is bad, however for this piece in particular I wanted less chaos and more soft magic.

For the structure, I used an inside base of buckram and wire. This helps the hat hold it’s structure over time. One downfall is my buckram is old and kind of warped from sitting in the studio so I noticed later on that there’s some unfortunate indentations developing on the hat. This could have been prevented if I had ironed my buckram first.

I finished the hat by sewing together the blue and white pieces of the hat and covered my base. I had already worked on the hat prior to building the outfit. At first I wasn’t going to add anything new outside of the gold details and the tassel but I did feel it looked a bit plain and if I was going to honor my sketch. As I started layering more trims, I realized the clean, bold lines of the white fabric against the blue were much more striking. Adding more trim just started to feel cluttered, and sometimes, less really is more.

That said, decorating will always be my favorite part of the process!

For the final version of the hat, I added some white trim to the tip and extended the gold detailing a bit further down.

I was also incredibly particular about the tassel thread. so much so that I ended up buying a pre-made tassel just to deconstruct it and remake it from scratch! The results are worth it.

There you have it, the final look! Seeing it all come together is so rewarding. Whether it’s the way the lace sparkles in the sunlight, or how the fabric moves when you spin. It’s delightful to get to bring this character from the pages of the manga to life.