Kitchen Costuming

I put a link on my blog last week for the Arizona Ghostbusters and I really wanted to highlight them a little more than just that.  AZspidey, in-between gigs as The Joker or his version of Spiderman, was asked to join the Arizona Ghostbusters a few months ago.

This group is a fan based costume club, but what makes them really special is their spirit.  I am not talking ghostly spirit here, but charitable spirit like in doing community service work for many of the organizations helping children and families.  These guys are not paid for their services and spend countless hours of their own time attending events and collecting donations for many charities.  The Arizona Ghostbusters are committed to not only having Marshmallow Man-size fun, but to making a difference in the lives of many people.

You won’t need Ecto Goggles or a PKE Meter to find these guys, just go to www.arizonaghostbusters.com and look for their next upcoming event!  See them in California at San Diego Comicon 2009 in July!

How much could it cost if I were to try to make a costume from home?

How much a costume you make at home could cost quite a bit depending on what your costume is and whether you choose to take advantage of cost saving methods in building your costume. 

Fabric can probably be one of the biggest expenses you might have towards the garment, but it doesn’t have to be. Look for fabric remnant stores, shop the internet, and use coupons and sales at local retail stores.  When JoAnn’s Fabrics is offering forty to fifty percent off coupons weekly through either their stores or online, it is just plain foolish not to use them.  You can have them mailed to your house and emailed to you by signing up at www.joann.com or any JoAnn’s location.  The Sunday’s paper usually has a flyer with coupons for the week (coupons can be used for other things besides fabric). I know other retail stores have these kinds of savings, but in Phoenix we have lost a lot of our competing fabric stores.  Check the stores in your area. I find remnant stores to be a better value than retail because you can buy some fabric by weight instead of per yard.  The down side here is that you may not know what kind of fabric you are buying or how to clean it. Todd (AZspidey) and I bought over 6 yard of 60 inch wide material for about $16.00 for his purple joker coat.  Remnant stores also have sales.  That much fabric at a retail store would have cost us at least $60.00 without a coupon or a sale at JoAnn’s (if we could even find the type of fabric or color we were looking for).

Obviously a costume can cost as much or as little as you want to put into it.  The point here is that a great looking costume does not have to cost a fortune, be smart about buying the materials and do it yourself.  If you just can’t sew or can only make parts of the costume yourself, think about bartering for services when you don’t have the money. Buying clothes from a thrift store is a great way to jump start a project also.

Wow! Where did the last two weeks go?  So much for those daily blogs on Blog Shorts!  Sorry folks, I just got slammed with all kinds of financial and health issues that needed to be taken care of and unfortunately I had to temporarily sacrifice a new blog or two on Kitchen Costuming.  Oh well, life happens…so now I can get back on track.

How do you know when to hand stitch versus sewing with a sewing machine? 

This is an interesting question because it really depends on what resources you have, the look you are going for, and whether it is easier to sew by hand or machine.  Even if you have a sewing machine available to you, it might not be the way to go.  For example: the gloves I made for AZspidey’s joker costume were sewn by hand.  The material was vinyl which is difficult to feed through the sewing machine.  There were also a lot of small turns in the movement of the article as you are sewing which makes neat stitching difficult.  Sewing by hand is always more time consuming, but necessary if you want to have a desired effect.  Some of the newer sewing machines won’t sew through heavy thicknesses of fabric or leather, in which case you may have to sew parts of the piece by hand.

If you are a filmmaker and are making a pirate movie (for example), you wouldn’t want your costumes to look machine sewn.  That doesn’t mean everything has to be sewn by hand, but you might want to do any noticeable stitching that way.  With the introduction of high definition technology, more details will be noticed on film that didn’t used to be.  That includes the making of accurate looking props too (and costumes would be included as props).

Where to start? Part IV  How much could it cost if I were to try to make a costume from home?  Upcoming 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!

What type of thread works best? 

This might seem like a simple question, thread is thread, right? At least that is what a friend just asked me today.  Hey! What does he know anyway?  He specializes in visual effects!  I, on the other hand, should know something because, not only did I once work at Jo Ann’s Fabric and Crafts, but I have been sewing for a good part of my life.

Okay, just to be thorough with my son’s second question (and not to just pull this answer from my all-knowing “mind”), I thought I would take a little research trip over to the fabric store. OMG!!! Did I not pay any attention to the thread while I worked at Jo Ann’s or did the thread industry expand while I was gone?  I think the problem here is that fabric stores around me seem to be closing en mass and I am left to barely find what I need at Wal-Mart (not much selection there and it sounds like a good excuse for being ignorant). At any rate, what I found was a veritable wonderland of cottony colors and shiny, strong threads that would make a silkworm drool.

There were Dual Duty, Specialty and Decorative threads.  Spools of thread came in all purpose, fine, heavy, metallic, clear, button and craft, hand quilting, machine quilting, extra strong, silk, top stitching, elastic, fusible, jeans (heavy), jeans (regular), serger, and upholstery. Whew! I also saw variegated (different colors on one spool) with “cute” names like piñata, teddy bear, gumballs, sunny day, and bowl of cherries. And of course, for the quintessential thread collector, neon colored  and “glow in the dark” threads are a must.

Now back to the original question, for which the answer, I am now going to pull out of my butt…er…I mean my mind.  It depends on what fabric you are using, what you are making, and how much you are going to wash/wear it. For most of your general sewing, you will use an all purpose Dual Duty thread. You will most likely never use a specialty thread unless you just want to. Mostly what you will use will be polyester covered polyester or cotton (even to sew on buttons). Thread, like fabric (made of woven threads), does wear out from general use and frequent cleaning with hot water and detergents.

And finally, I’d like to give you a tip about buying the correct color thread for your fabric.  Always bring a swatch of the cloth with you.  When you find a spool that looks close to the color, unwind the thread strand and lay it across your fabric.  You will get a more accurate color match if you do this as opposed to just putting the spool up to the material.

Where to start? Part III   How do you know when to hand stitch something versus sewing with a sewing machine?  Upcoming post!