Tin Man Costume

The kids at my church are doing a music revue. I was asked to make a Tin Man costume. I didn't have a lot of time bc I'm leaving this weekend to be in my brother's wedding, and I still had to alter my dress! So this is how this costume got made....I didn't do step by steps this time bc those take too long. I will show you details.

First of all, I made my patterns from the teenager's pajamas so I could get an idea of fit.

The heart is velcroed on bc I guess he has to remove it during the scene.

The bottom shirt hem.

His pajamas were jersey and this fabric doesn't stretch, so I made a keyhole opening in the back for him to get his head through.

A close up.

Inside the front and back collars.

I understitched the collar.

I topstitched the shoulders to keep the innerfacing from coming up. (This is the inside. The outside has grey thread.)

I learned this "easing the sleeves in" trick from the PBS show "It's Sew Easy." I zigzag stitched some bias binding onto the sleeve heads first, before easing them onto the bodice. Worked like a charm!

I cut all the pieces out beforehand with pinking shears so the seams wouldn't fray. This is the shirt's side seam.

Because I'm not exactly sure how wide he is, how long his legs are, or how long his arms are, I elasticized all those places. This will keep his hands free onstage, for instance. 

I didn't put side seams in down the legs. This saved sewing time. If you do this, just make sure your back is cut longer than the front.

The finished outfit again.

(Because Blogger for Android sucks big time, it deleted this picture from up top and won't let me put it back up there....so it's here now...)

A side view of the heart. I spray adhered the back felt to a piece of foam, then sewed the velcro on through the felt and foam to give the velcro stability. Then, I spray adhered the front felt piece on. I was going to sew it all together, but the adhesive was gumming up my machine's needle, so...hey....work smarter, not harder!

(Sorry for all this space. Again...Blogger sucks.....)

The End!!!!......

(...Whew....Just do it on a computer next time, Jess!!!)

Refashioning: Jake the Pirate Costume from a Lady's Suit

I love my job, but sometimes it requires doing the most random things.

I am a secretary for my church. We had a Disney themed Easter egg hunt this past Saturday. My pastor's wife asked me to make a Jake and the Neverland Pirates vest for one of the teenagers to wear.

This is what Jake the Pirate looks like:

So, I was going to buy all the fabric needed, but as I was out driving, I thought I would stop into a thrift store just to see what they had. They had this lady's suit for $.50. It was just about the right size in the bodice, so I thought...why make a whole vest from scratch, when I could just work around something already made?

I went to Wal-Mart and got a few other supplies: yellow blanket binding, four yellow buttons, yellow thread, and iron-on facing...or what I thought was iron-on facing...

First step was to cut out the shoulder pads and cut off the sleeves.

It had patch pockets on the front that needed taking off as well. They were attached from the back to the front, so this is what I did to take care of this problem: 

This bottom hem would be covered in yellow binding, so it didn't matter that it was showing on the front.

Okay, next, I had to remove the collar because if you scroll back up to the Jake picture, you will see that it isn't right.

So, fortunately, since the skirt came with the blazer, I had enough fabric to make a new collar. I cut the elastic off the top of the skirt.

Okay, using the original collar as as sort of guide, I drew a new collar around it on paper I pieced together.

The first collar wasn't quite right. It sat too low. (Wow. I look very frazzled in this picture!)

So, through trial and error, I finally drew a collar pattern that I thought would work.

The main thing I wanted was for the collar to stand up a little bit in the back. The original pattern didn't do that.

Okay, so this is the part that really started to stress me out. I thought I had bought iron-on facing, because when I asked the lady at Wal-Mart, "Wear is your iron-on facing?" she lead me to the roll of the stuff I bought. . .which was actually iron-on adhesive! Grrrr. . .But I didn't have all this time to run back to Wal-Mart and get the right thing, because as I said before, I was at work. Meaning: I had other things I had to get done besides making vests! So, in the words of Tim Gunn, it was a "Make-It-Work moment.". . .

So I made two large pieces of double-sided fabric, essentially. It didn't have the body I wanted for the collar to stand up nicely, but at least it had a little stiffness--albeit heavy. I laid the double-sided fabric on top of each other and pinned my pattern to it and cut out the pieces.

Then, I stitched up the back seam of the collar pieces. 

Here is the middle back of the neck of the vest, denoted with a pin.

Then, I sewed the binding onto the vest, and very casually mitered the corners. (Again, not a lot of time to do it perfectly.)

Excuse my foot in this picture.

Then, I sewed the binding onto the collar.

Remember that pin in the middle back of the neck of the vest? I matched that to the middle seam of the collar, pinned them both together, and sewed them together.

Then, I tacked down the points of the bottom of the collar. (You can see the one on the left was tacked and the one on the right wasn't yet.)

I had left about 1/2" of sleeve so that I could use that as seam allowance. I folded that 1/2" under and sewed both sleeves up.

Last step: buttons!

This was a peasant blouse that I reworked to make the Jake shirt. (Forgot to take pictures of this process.)

I made the headband and cummerbund out of some Wal-Mart poly-satin.

And here is what he looked like at the egg hunt! If I had had him in person to fit things on, I would have taken the vest in a bit, but anyways, he looks cute!

And here I am at the same egg hunt. I am supposed to be Cruella Deville, but the white hairspray I used turned out grey. Oh well! (That "fur stole" is a tube of faux fur that I made in about two minutes at the last possible second!)

The End!