Halloween 2009

For halloween this year I was Link from Zelda. But I also worked on a few other costumes. Here’s some of the documentation:

Tunic: Simple green velour with trimming of green patterened silk. Trimming is easier than it looks: just cut your trimming material to strips 3 times as wide as you’d like the trim to be, then iron it in half lengthwise, then fold the cut edges in towards the middle, then iron them down. You’ll have strips that are incredibly easy to machine-sew onto the borders of your main fabric. I put grommets in these at strategic locations, such as up the sides, at the neck, etc., and laced with leather thong.

Hat: The wig was the “surfer dude” wig from the Garment District in Cambridge.  The hat is a simple sewing job whereby you measure, pin conservatively large, sew, then try it on, identify loose areas, and turn it inside out again to sew a little further in on those spots.

Boots: I scrapped the idea of full boots because I had a halloween alleycat race to ride and needed my shoes. Instead, I sewed what were essentially legwarmers out of a faux leather fabric. There’s no great way to fit your legs without some trial and error, same as with the hat: make them generally right but a bit too large, then turn them inside out and sew a little smaller on any loose areas.

Accessories: I bought two cheap, wide, brown leather belts at k-mart, sewed a few rings onto one to help sheath the sword. The sword I got on ebay for about $30 — it was the only one whose dimensions I liked, but it came a ridiculous blue, so I painted it with metallic silver paint and it looks great (it looks like someone’s manufacturing much better looking ones now than they were when I bought it). For the necklace I just went to a bead store. The pouch was a simple inside out sewing job. I nixed the idea of ears because I’m terrible at stage makeup.

Undergarments: American Apparel thermals all the way. You could go cheaper but the army/navy stuff tends to be off-white and just doesn’t look as good.

I also helped with a few other costumes this year. Helena wanted to be a stick figure, so I got her some EL Tape and inverters and we did that. Here are a couple videos a friend shot of her dancing at Love in the west village:

If I had this to re-do, I’d have gone with EL wire instead of tape. I’ve used it plenty before and wanted to try tape because of the brightness, which I thought she’d need out in new york, but in retrospect the extra power consumption and the fact that it only has one glowing face (as opposed to cylindrical wire) makes it just not worth it.

Lastly, Nick wanted to be Scorpion, so I also sewed his costume. We used some shiny synthetic blend for the gold, thick black trimming ribbon on the edges, and some lightly padded black lining fabric underneath to give it some structure (like you’d find on the insides of most jackets). I just used a couple of velcro strips to hold the belt on. Nick did a great job with the other components, somehow managing to dig up the perfect wrist, shin, and mouth pieces. Most impressive.

And of course, Zack wore my old Ghostbusters costume. It gets use every year with one friend or another.