Daughter's costume is complete and she is SUPER excited. She couldn't wait to try it on last night and kept looking in the mirror.
Costume was made from Simplicity pattern 2561. The hat I made from a floppy hat pattern I had found on line. I just tacked up the sides.
You can see better pics of that here.
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I am officially done with my husbands pirate costume. I don't have a dress form in his size so it looks a little funny on my size 4 dress form. The shoulders are a bit droopy.
The shirt is made of muslin that I tea dyed, coat is made of black velvet and the pants are made of a brown micro fiber polyester. I was in such a hurry to get this done that I forget to take pictures of the costume before I distressed the material.
This pattern calls for 24 buttons. Buttons are expensive. The larger they are and the more ornate they are the more expensive they get. So, because it is just a costume, I decided to make the buttons. They are made out a a 1" dowel rod. I used a miter saw to cut slivers of dowel rod. I must have cut about 40 of them to get 24 decent looking ones. I sanded them, painted them, sanded them again and then drilled holes in the center. I think they turned out great, perfect for a pirate. $2.00 spent plus my time of making them was totally worth it since it would have cost over $30 to buy buttons.
Coat closed without pistols and sword.
I went to Hobby Lobby last night to pick up some vinyl and red cotton. I decided to search for stuff that I could add to the costume to plus it up a bit. I looked all over the store. I came across these metal keys in the home decor area. PERFECT! I bought them, brought them home and added a leather loop to them so they can slide onto the belt. Looks pretty cool.
While at the Renaissance Festival a couple of weeks ago we noticed a lot of the actors had metal tankards, beer steins, whatever you want to call them, tied to dresses, belts and satchels. No where were they selling these. Bummer. It would have created a nice sound with the keys and a cup clanging around. I did find some nice corked bottles at Hobby Lobby but didn't get any. I was afraid of something like that getting broken.
Used Simplicity pattern 4923.
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I finished up the pirate costume last night. When I finished the initial sewing the other day I decided it looked to pristine. Pirates aren't clean looking. So I decided to distress the fabric and make it look a little old. I was kind of nervous about messing it up, but it turned out pretty good. I didn't go crazy with rips and tears because I don't want it to fall apart. I used sandpaper, acrylic paint and dusted it with a little black spray paint.
Once I added all the "extras" the costume really came to life. The sword, though it looks like metal, is in fact plastic.
"extras": pistol, sword, leather belt, long black scarf, coin pouch, and 3 necklaces. I will also be wearing a red scarf around me head and earring.
I bought three of these plastic flintstock pirate pistols as props for our Halloween costumes. They were SUPER ugly and cheap looking. Plus they had the orange caps on the front of them. Don't tell anyone, I ripped those off.
I paid $3.99 for each gun. I decided to repaint them. I figured they couldn't look any worse.
I managed to get most of the gun apart. It has tiny little screws holding most of it together. What I couldn't get apart I taped off with blue painters tape. I just used brown, gold and black spray paint. Nothing fancy. It was whatever I had in the garage. I think they were each a different brand. I also used a little bit of black shoe polish and a black sharpie to get into some of those grooves.
Doesn't it look AWESOME!! It almost looks real. I sprayed a bit more black spray paint at the end of the barrel. Figured it would be more black from the firing and gunpowdery smoke.
The gold turned out great. Really looks like brass.
I was at our local Renaissance Festival this weekend and saw a vendor selling replica weaponry. They happened to have some Flintstock pistols. The cheapest was $45. Now I REALLY like my $3.99 ones.
The Halloween costume making is in full swing. This year we are all going as pirates.
This is Simplicity pattern 3677. I tea stained the fabric for the shirt. Kind of hard to see that in the picture. My next job is to distress the material so that it looks old. I'll post those pics when I finish that.
