The Joker

another picture heavy post. click on any photo to see its full size.

Caleb was The Joker for Halloween this year. He wanted to be him last year, but I wasn't able to get the costume made, plus we had to go out of town for a funeral. I made sure to get the costume done this year, and I barely did.

we had a long day of trick-or-treating and a party.

there, that's better! I used Burda 8186 for all 3 pieces, and decided this was also going to be a test run for the possibility of making him a suit for 8th grade promotion in June. I used a cheapish poly gab from Hancock Fabrics for the suit, and cotton twill for the vest.

I cut a size 36 for the jacket, and it is fully lined. There was to be an inside pocket, but I was on a really tight deadline, so I skipped it.

The double welt pockets have a flap. The pattern calls for the flap pieces to be self-lined. I used lining, because otherwise they would have been quite bulky. The breast pocket is functional as well.

I do like that Burda patterns give you separate patterns for the upper and under collars, but I thought this one was kinda weird for a suit jacket. There is a collar stand, and the under collar is not cut on the bias (the upper collar looks exactly the same, with the collar stand also). It still looks nice, however.

There's a vent in the back.

I didn't quite make my deadline, and used safety pins to hold up the sleeve hems. You can see I bagged the lining through the sleeve seam, and I'll finish up the hems (and add the shoulder pads I neglected) sometime this week.

I also cut a size 36 for the vest. The pattern calls for double welt pockets, but I made single welt pockets. I think they look nicer on a vest.

The vest is also fully lined. (btw -- my husband did the graphic art on the shirt caleb is wearing)

The pants were the first part of the costume I made, and I cut a 34. They fit, but seemed like just barely, which is why I cut the other pieces a size larger. The pants have a double welt pocket on the back, which I did (though it's sloppy).

The fly front is real, not mock. It was pretty easy, though next time I will use lining for parts of it, as it's a bit bulky.

Caleb really liked the costume, and I'm looking forward to making another suit for him come spring. This was the only costume I had to make this year, as Calvin re-used the jester costume, and I found a James costume at Target for Connor.

To Boldly Go

Lisa was right -- that patch certainly did look like something James T. Kirk would have. Tomorrow is the annual Music for Munchkins concert that is given by the high school. This year the theme is Outer Space, and the orchestra teacher requested something "star trek-ish". :) Her students wanted something cyborg or Borg (because of her name), but we decided to go classic Star Trek, a la Captain Kirk:
Not too bad?? It's not authentic (no raglan sleeves), but you certainly get the feel, no? By the way, did you know how much info there is out there on Star Trek uniforms? A lot.

Are you wondering why I used hotpatterns as one of my tags? That's because I used the HP Cosmo Dress top as my base. It was handy and already had a bust dart. I eyeballed the v-neck, added length, and slimmed the sleeve. I like how the neckline turned out, and boy was this sucker fast to make.

I also made a patch for Mr. Spock. Circles are kinda hard to satin stitch, especially when they are this small (this patch is about 2x3 inches). I used this site for the proper symbols for the patches. To make this patch I layered the black knit (from the neckline), steam-a-steam lite (because it was handy), and gold lamé. I fused a block of that, and then drew my patch outline. Two passes of satin stitching later, I cut the patch out. It was pretty easy.

Unfortunately, my family and I are not able to go to the concert because Calvin has another gymnastics meet. :( We are kinda sad (the meet will still be fun). It's going to be really neat, with E.T., Mr. Spock, Luke Skywalker, and even some space zombies making appearances.

I'm Sewing!

Just a quick peek on something I've been working on:
I made it using lamé, steam-a-steam lite, interlock, and lots of satin stitching. More to come later.

Halloween

Here in Milwaukee, trick-or-treat is always held on the Sunday before Halloween, in the afternoon. It's always been that way (I don't know why); I never trick-or-treated in the dark on Halloween as a child. Anyway, here are the boys:
Caleb was a biker. He was going to be the Joker, but I didn't get a costume done in time, and it actually turned out for the best, as we had to quickly leave town a few days later for a family funeral (having green hair at the funeral probably wouldn't have been the best thing. ^_^)

Calvin was Zorro, Connor was a ghost. He was going to be a doctor again like last year, but at the absolute last minute he wanted to be a ghost. It's a good thing I keep a bolt of muslin on hand at all times.

As I mentioned above, we had to go to Iowa for a funeral. They do trick-or-treat there at night, usually on Halloween (it was on the 30th this year, and they call it Beggar's Night instead). My FIL dressed up as a clown, Caleb decided to go as a pirate this time, and Connor decided to skip the whole thing and stay home to play with trains. One of the traditions in Iowa is that you have to tell a joke to get your candy. Calvin told everyone that he doesn't do jokes, he does tricks. So he'd go into the person's yard and do a running roundoff into a backhandspring. In a cape. It looked pretty darn cool. People were pretty impressed, and would give him extra candy. He scored big on the candy in Iowa!

I used Butterick 5656 for Calvin's Zorro cape, adding 10" to the length, and using the collar piece from the tunic. To finish off the collar, I stitched it on as if I were making a dress shirt collar stand. It's sewn all around the neck and front edges, leaving the top open.

I then trimmed and clipped the collar. After pressing it, I turned under the open edge on the top.

To finish it off and close the opening, I edgestitched all around. A finished collar, with all edges enclosed!

Complete!

Here are the jester costumes in all their glory. Turns out that Caleb's friend had 2 pairs of gold shoes, so they wore those, along with either green tights or green soccer socks. I'll try and get a picture of the two of them together this weekend. The feast was a lot of fun, with kings, queens, serfs, bishops, monks, wizards, jesters, cooks, archers, knights, and plague victims.




(the bells fell off. I'm sure the metal cut through the thread. any ideas on how to get them sewn on and stay on?)

Court Jester: The Hat

The pièce de résistance! (maybe not, the pants ARE really cool, but this really makes it say 'jester'). I used Butterick 4313 for the jester hats. This pattern went together really nicely, and was quicker than I thought it would be. I think the pattern runs a bit small, however, so if you make it, check the fit right after you sew the main pieces together.

Looks cool, no? I underlined the pieces with canvas instead of using the fusible interfacing called for. The horns are stuffed with fiberfill. If I hadn't been on such a time constraint, I would've spent more time making sure I didn't have any of the same colors next to each other.

I lined both hats in blue, since I had a good amount of it leftover. To make this hat, you sew the main horn pieces together, then stuff the horn. Next you are to put in the lining, but I did that last.

You then make the two little horns separately, stuff them, and hand sew them to the hat. That was hard, and I can't imagine doing it with the lining in already. Next time I would hand sew the little horns on before stuffing the big horn. The horns were also hard to turn right side out, and I rounded the corners.

I finished the bottom with a french binding (like a quilt). The binding was sewn onto the inside of the hat, and flipped to the outside and edgestitched down. Quick, easy, and looks pretty good.

Each horn got 3 bells each, and it does fit nicely. For as big as the hat is, it really stays nice and secure on the head. I hope to get some good pictures at the feast this afternoon (my batteries died during our photo shoot this morning. o_O ).

Court Jester: Tunics

Yesterday was a costume production day, and I finished the tunics and hats. Originally, I had hoped to make each tunics different. However, I ran out of gold, plus was on a time constraint, so the tunics are the same, just reversed in colors. I tried to get more gold fabric, but couldn't find it again. This gold duppioni was the closest I could find.

The tunics are basically rectangles. I cut two fronts/backs out of both red and green, about 14x29. I then used the pattern I made for the pharaoh costume and cut the shoulder slope and neckline.

To finish off the neckline, I made a facing pattern, cut it out of the duppioni, and fused it with knit interfacing. I stitched the tunic RST at the shoulders and CF/CB. I then attached the right side of the facing to the wrong side of the tunic, stitched, trimmed, and clipping it, and flipped it right side out.

After pressing the neckline, I edgestitched the facing down. An easy way to finish off the neckline and make it look like a collar at the same time.

The sleeves are rectangles also (13x15), and I dagged the hems. I put a 3" bias gusset in the underarm. Hemmed the bottom and side slits and they are finito!

Court Jester: Pants Complete!

Today I finished both pairs of pants. For the bottoms, I added a band that also has a casing for ribbon. This way, the boys can cinch the hems in either above or below their knees.

First, I cut a band 4.5" by the circumfrence of the hem, plus 1.5". I hemmed the short edges (3/8" turned twice). I pressed 1/2" under along one long edge. Then I stitched the right side of the band to the wrong side of the pants, using a 1/2" seam.

Next I edgestitched pressed edge down, covering the previous stitching.

Lastly, I ran another row of stitching about 1/2" away, making a casing.

The finished pants! On to the tunics!

Court Jester: More Pants Progress

Yesterday I worked on the 2nd pair of jester pants. I decided these would be striped, but also with an elizabethan feel.

First, I cut 6" strips from the gold. It's a reversible sari fabric, so I hemmed the long edges so the gold bordered the blue (1/2" turned twice). If I didn't have reversible fabric, I would have used a hong kong underlining technique with 2 fabrics. I did 6 strips hemmed on both sides, and 4 hemmed on one side only, for the inseams/crotch seams.

I cut the pants out of the green fabric, and laid the strips on top. Then I basted them to the green, and stitched down the strips to the crotch level, leaving them loose from there to the hem.

Ready to sew!

Court Jester: Pants Progress

Costume sewing has commenced! Yesterday I started working on Caleb's pants. I figure this would be the most time consuming part of the costume, and I was right. I worked on this for 5-6 hours yesterday. First, I traced off a pair of his soccer shorts for a pattern, adding about 8" in length.

Next, I cut the diamonds to piece together to make fabric. I tried to think of a way to strip piece this, but couldn't figure it out in my head, so I decided to just cut the diamonds and sew them all together. I cut 4" strips, then laid the 60° mark on the edge to cut an angle. Using that new cut edge, I then placed the 4" mark and cut the diamonds.

I stitched contrasting diamonds together in pairs (and screwed them up at first), and then laid them out on my pattern, so I would only piece as much as I needed. Then I stitched pairs together, and filled in with single diamonds or triangles. I forgot to add a 1/4" seam allowance to one edge of the triangles at first, so I just kinda stretched those to fit a little bit.

Then I did it all over again, only in reverse. I think the second time around went faster and looks better. I used my serger, since the gold frayed a lot.

Done! This is as far as I got yesterday. Today, I will cut these out and stitch them together. As well as finishing these pants, I also hope to finish the other pants (remember, I am making 2 costumes: one for Caleb, and one for his friend).

Court Jester: Planning

Remember the Pharaoh costume I made for Caleb for the Opet festival at school? They also have a medieval feast as part of the social studies cirriculum. They get assigned roles for this one (after all, you can't have 37 kings now, can you?). Caleb is the court jester, along with a good friend of his. I'm going to do both of their costumes, so they 'match'. They will have to entertain the king during the tournament, so they are practicing a little routine. :D
On Saturday, I went over to Joann Fabrics and scoured the clearance racks. Calvin was with me, and he actually picked most of these fabrics. He's got a great eye for this sort of thing. The gold is really the wrong side of a blue sari fabric.

Here's our inspiration. While at the Ren Faire in AZ, Caleb looked in all the shops for jester costumes. He didn't see anything he liked, but he did like the look of this painting, so I took a photo. We searched online for costumes too, but everything we found was pretty lame, IMO. I have been re-reading some Asimov books, and noticed this one had a neat painting on the cover too, so viola! Inspiration! We found the hat pattern on Saturday, though I'm going to see if maybe one of the boys would like a variation on this one (upper right) instead.

Deadline is May 2!

Superheroes!

Yesterday was the annual Music for Munchkins concert given by the high school orchestra. The theme this year was Superheroes.

I made this costume for the orchestra teacher. She was WonderWand Woman, and loved it! Not pictured are the gold vambraces I made. I also made a purple tunic and hat for The Green Goblin. The concert was wonderful, with evil villans (Green Goblin, Metroid, Mr. Freeze, and Syndrome) fighting with heroes (Spiderman, Superman, Batman, Elastigirl, Violet, and the orchestra's very own superhero: Stringman). Beautiful music was played, suspense, and action made for a great afternoon!

Calvin got to try out the instrument petting zoo. He wants to play the viola.

The boys did the crafts (masks, capes, face painting). Connor wanted to do them all, but didn't want to wear any of them. He insisted that Caleb wear whatever he created, and then was just distraught that Caleb wouldn't fly with the cape on. :)