Kitchen Costuming

Anyone who does crafts that require the use of superglue knows that they will eventually glue their fingers together.  Spiderman wranglers are no exception.  Of course I am not officially a wrangler, but at the moment I have been made in charge of gluing the “hard to reach” webs on my son Todd’s costume.  Luckily we were prepared with acetone for me to place adhesive where it shouldn’t belong.

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 Hats can really add to the completeness of a costume.  I have made outfits for frontiersmen, renaissance,  and pirates.  None of which would have looked finished without a hat. In some cases, I was only required to make hat when the rest of the costume could be pieced together from thrift store items or forgotten old clothes. (continue reading…)

My Twitter friend, Sarah, likes to put together haunted attractions.  This year she would like to have some clowns that resemble the ones in the Chiodo Brothers production of Killer Klowns from Outer Space.  The film is a 1988 American comedy horror movie, made by The Chiodo Brothers ( www.chiodobros.com ). The film is about aliens (who look like clowns) that arrive on Earth to capture and harvest people in order to use them as sustenance…mmmm…yummy (More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Klowns_from_Outer_Space).

These clowns are pretty creepy, so I could see how they would work in a haunted attraction. Although I have been known to make a clown costume, it was never as scary as a killer clown.       

The closest I have come to a spooky costume was when I made Frank the Rabbit from the Donnie Darko movie (another cult classic) for AZspidey’s friend, Ron.

Of course the part I was sewing was the fluffy bunny body, which if worn separately from the mask, couldn’t scare a bunch of carrots (Hey, I live in a world around animators; of course carrots can be afraid. They can even scream!).  The mask was purchased online, but was not painted.  AZspidey completed the final touches on it for that special ‘don’t even think you’re gonna to make it home’ look.

How could Ron see (or pee) you may ask?  Let’s just say somehow he found a way!  See you in an another universe, Frank!

Ahoy, ye scurvy dogs, let’s face it, pirates have fascinated us for centuries.  Pirate costumes and accessories won’t be going away anytime soon with the anticipation of Pirates of the Caribbean 4 set to arrive sometime in 2012.

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to make a pirate costume for a friend, David, who had always wanted one.  Although I was responsible for the majority of the clothing, it was a very time consuming project.  Therefore, I thought it would be more fun to have David work on some of his own props.

As soon as The Halloween Express stores (www.halloweenexpress.com) were open we decided to scope out the various pirate pistols and swords. The sword was from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean line of costume accessories.  It is about 32 inches long and has a really nice heavy plastic sheath.  Unfortunately, I don’t think it is still available for sale anywhere.  Hopefully it will make a return when the new movie is finished.

David bought a couple of pistols and quickly disassembled them to sand any imperfections in the molds.  After putting them back together, modeling putty (I think JB Weld might work better) was applied to fill cracks and holes that shouldn’t be there. With various latex paint mixtures and David’s talented eye for modeling replicas, he had some really nice looking prop pistols.

The sword, on the other hand, was a little more involved as it had a sheath cover that needed sewing.  That was left up to me.  I will cover the makin’ of the scabbard in the next post.

The bat-cape from hell

Last year for Halloween, I was working on the Joker from The Dark Knight for Todd while his friend, Ron, set up camp on my living room floor to create his Batman costume out of vinyl and Foamies. Other than supplying materials that Ron didn’t have, I had very little to do with the creation of his costume. 

With Todd adding pieces to his joker on a monthly basis (we started this project in April), I hardly had time to do anything else. Ron found a Batman cape pattern on the internet, bought some velvet at the remnant shop and looked around for another seamstress to do the job for him. This is when my world started to get complicated.

Know who you are hiring

The seamstress was recommended by a friend, which is a good thing. Ron hired her to make his cape, but did not ask enough questions, which was a bad thing. Ron did ask her to call him if she needed him for fittings, which was smart.  But, she never called him and after $75.00 and several weeks later, she presented him with a cape you could wrap an elephant in.  Guess who got to re-size his cape? No it wasn’t her!  It was me (by now I felt sorry for him)! Yeah, technically, she should have fixed it for him which is good customer service, but she now wanted $15.00 more per hour to fix the mistakes.  The error Ron made in the first place was to try and use an untested pattern, but if the seamstress was on her game she would have realized that the pattern was just HUGE before she ever cut out the fabric. She also didn’t piece the panels together correctly, but this woman was hoping Ron wouldn’t notice (She actually admitted that! I really wished we had saved the pictures of her work).  She also threw in some four foot bonus dowel rods to hold the cape out.  Unfortunately, if Ron ever wanted to put his arms down, he would probably have tripped himself or someone else. It didn’t seem as if this lady knew how to sew velvet either.  Okay, so the moral of the story is, make sure your pattern will work, ask lots of questions like how long will this take?  Will you fix it without an added cost if it is not right (providing she is the one who made the mistake)? Have you ever sewn this kind of fabric (in this case velvet)? Can I see some of your work?  And then to make it all legal, GET EVERYTHING YOU AGREED ON IN WRITING!!!! DATED AND SIGNED BY BOTH OF YOU!

Not bad, if I do say so myself

I barely had time to finish Todd’s costume (that will be a separate blog) and Ron’s bat-cape before Halloween, so here it is.  Ron was grateful and I was glad I could help him, but let’s not do this again this year, guys!