For Halloween this last year I wanted to display a pirate flag.  The book Pirateology had a design I really resonnated with.  These are the colours of a fictious female pirate by the name of Arabella Drummond.

The pattern was a hand drawn copy transferred to Wonder-Under and ironed onto muslin fabric.  It was then easy to cut out and iron in place on the black fabric.  I sewed a running stitch about 1/8 inch along the muslin edges.  The skull and swords pattern appears on both sides of the flag.

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!

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!

This blog is evolving because I saw a need on some of the forums to help people be able to make their costumes and props at home.  I am by far not an expert professional costumer, but I have been making costumes since my kids were young.  I will have more information on that later, but if you like to make your own costumes and have any thoughts on what you would like to know on this blog, please leave a comment. I will certainly try to help you with whatever your needs are.

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