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.