Shopping for Capes!

Saturday morning/afternoon we spent it at Mood Fabrics! It's always a fun store to visit but because of all the choices, if you don't have a project in mind it kinda becomes like food shopping while hungry. Good for Mood, not so good for your own wallet.

We knew we needed some metallic green fabric for Mike's cape. We found the perfect fabric on a previous trip in a spandex at the spandex store across the street from Mood. The one we visited was called Stretch House on 37th Street, but up a block on 38th Street there is another place called Spandex House and just a shop or two over from that one there is Spandex World. Until I started this project I had no idea there were so many competing spandex shops in the city. That they all can survive so close together makes me wonder just how much spandex the general public uses. You can actually stand in the doorway of Spandex House, and taunt Spandex World, if that's how you want to roll. It's like the Starbucks of the fabric world.

Aaaaanyway, so we go to Mood for the other stuff. Like fabric for my reddish cape, some lining for the green metallic cape, and that's it! Nothing extra. After wandering around the entire place a few times we found everything we needed in one tiny corner. Because we kept coming and going from that same corner we got to know Markese pretty well and he probably heard more about our costume project than he thought he needed to know.  He was a good sport about it at least.

That pic up there is of the fabrics we picked for our capes. What's not there is the roll of buckram for the big ole' stand up collar on Mike's cape. Currently, Mike's cape is cut and the main part is sewn together, I just need to do the collar and the pleats on the shoulder. After that, I'll get to work on mine and then we need to make the gold pieces to pin the capes on. I'm open to suggestion on how to do that bit.

Tomorrow I'll have pics of my progress so far. As always, wish me luck!

Halloween!
OK, it's not a superhero unless you really like syrup. This was one of my favorite costumes for Halloween. It involved a lot of dyeing of fabric. The skirt, shirt, and collar thing were all dyed brown, and the apron had to be dyed red.

The letters were done by tracing a copy of the label all blown up to 200% or something like that and then lot's of cut and paste. The Cap is yellow foam and hot clue! It may still exist as a container someplace in the attic. It probably holds yarn. I have a lot of yarn. I think my next costume should be completely knit. I can't think of a better way to use up yarn.

Anyway, this weekend we are starting actual costume construction! I'm hoping to get our capes done. If I can do that, we'll be getting somewhere.

Being short and fat can be tough when it comes to costuming but there are some fun characters out there. This was from NYCCC 2012. I am the Penguin, and my Beloved is The Riddler. It was funny the number of people who thought, "The Joker!" Close, but not quite.

This was another costume that was mostly purchased pieces. Our hats with both bought from the Halloween Store near Union Square in NYC. We just added purple ribbon and a question mark on the green hat. My white shirt was from a thrift store for $5, the bow tie we just had lying around for some reason, my Tux jacket was from eBay for just $40. You can't see my purple pants, but they're from eBay, too. They were slightly too long. Being short, that will always be a problem. The monacle and the cigarette holder may have also come from the Halloween Store. I just can't remember.

The Riddler costume is still my favorite. The jacket and shirt just fit so nice. I love the way it looks. We got that purple jacket at a thrift store someplace downtown. The question marks were all ironed on using fuse-able interfacing. We used a bunch of different fonts for the marks. He's wearing green pants that I got from eBay. The gloves may have been part of the Ma Hunkle costume from the previous year. The cane is just a wooden dowel. The topper is a diamond shaped candle holder. Mike got some fimo clay and made a question mark for the bottom of the holder which he then filled with clay and screwed on the top of the dowel. It lasted for the day, but now it's in pieces. It'd be easy enough to fix it but we'll have to figure out a way to secure it better.

These costumes were fun. I spent a lot of the day waving at other Penguins that were dressed just like me. I enjoyed it, but there is something fun about being the only one in your costume. Mike's wasn't the only Riddler, but I still think he was the best one. This one is still my favorite.

Red Tornadoes! Here are some of our favorite costumes. The Red Tornado set.

Me as Ma Hunkle, the original Red Tornado from the Golden Age of comics. The first female superhero! Rockin' the metal pot! I love this costume for the comfort, but I have yet to find someone with the tools to cut eye holes into my pot. I was able to cut a slit in there at some point, so I can see just a little through those black pieces of fabric glued on there but I'd really like to get actual holes.  The costume consists of a red union suit, some green sweatpants with the legs cut off, a yellow tank top with the red tornado symbol sewn on, my blue felt cape, my stock pot from the dollar store, yellow boots from eBay, and purple gloves that I forgot to wear for this pic. With the whole costume on I look like I stepped right off the pages of an old comic book. And because of the thrown togetherness of the pieces it's one of the most comfortable costumes out there.

For my Beloved's costume as the more current Red Tornado, we have a red metallic body suit with the T symbol sewn on. That was a pain because it was my first time working with spandex. I held the pieces in my and thought, 'Now what?' I had no idea how I was going to get the thing on and not look puckered or distorted. What I did was sew it on using an embroidery hoop. I stretched the fabric out in the hoop and used the edges as a guide to make sure the 'T' stayed round. I think I would do it differently now, but at the time it worked. The cape looks pretty good, but I really had NO idea how to get that together. It's just a 5 foot long piece of blue satin fabric edged with blanket edging. The shoulders are all bunched up so they kinda stay on and the collar is just sewn straight in behind the neck. It looks fine, but I know that I can improve that. For footwear, I was worried that walking around barefoot would just rip up the bottom of the bodysuit. Mike went out and got some flip flops and put some red metallic fabric across the top and he was fine. Again, we'd probably do it differently now but it all worked out.

Going around the floor like this was a lot of fun! My costume was obscure enough that people who recognized it were really excited to see it. And as matched pair, it was even more fun!

So that's our first set of costumes.

Welcome...

Welcome!
My Beloved and I have been dressing up as Super Heroes and Villains for the NY Comic Con for the past bunch of years. This year, I'm going a bit more scratch than usual. Hopefully with results we can be proud of. Join me, won't you, as we fail and succeed in fitting the two of us in our costumes of choice this year.