Thursday, September 4, 2008

Puss in Boots


This is another thrown-together number I made for Tom, getting its one and only outing at Enken's Fairy Tales party. Everything (except the pants) was made from scratch a few days before the event. The man loves cats, so Puss in Boots was the obvious choice (not sure he'd admit it, but he doesn't need much of an excuse to wear kitty ears!).
I started with the ears, using leftover fur from Enken’s Mongol Slippers, with inspiration from this tutorial on costumewardrobe.com. The paws/gloves gave me a bit more trouble. I had JUST enough fur for the opposite sides of each glove, and promptly cut out three of one side and one of the other. This happens alarmingly often to me - wonder if I'll ever learn to check my orientation before I cut? *facepalm* Eventually I remade the inner section with black stretch fabric, handsewing felt circles to make the pads of the paw. Salvaged!

Next up came the Seinfeld-worthy puffy shirt. These are seriously easy to make! A member of the Costumers' Guild once told me it was just "made from squares and rectangles", so I played it by ear, using a very light cotton lawn. I cut two large rectangles for the body of the shirt, sewing up three sides and hemming the bottom. I then cut generous arm holes, and attached a 'tube' of fabric (just a long rectangle sewn down one side) to each, ruffling at the top. I finished each arm with some elastic about three inches from the hem. As it was a total rush job I just zipped a hem on the bottom of the shirt (it was being tucked in anyway) and cut and hemmed a round hole for the neck (as the tabard was going to cover it). And that's it!

The tabard was just red drill with gold ribbon trim, and the motifs were freehanded in gold fabric paint (sadly I have zero artistic talent, but I did what I could!). I attached a false collar on the outside - this is my least favourite part of the costume - it looks really rushed and crappy, and doesn't sit right, but we had ten minutes 'til the first guest arrived!

The boots were a great success - mostly inspired by this costume boots tutorial and using a tape mould of Tom's legs. I cut on the basis of the mould, sewed the brown vinyl pieces together (adding a cuff on the top) and attached some elastic to hold the cover onto a pair of Tom's black dress shoes. Finally, we secured the edges by using a bit of double-sided tape (the costumers' best friend!).

To top it all off, we slung Chris' old belt around the middle and tucked in one of my fencing swords (a sabre, to be precise - inherited once upon a time from my ex-competitive fencing brother). The whole thing was finished with a jingling cat bell around the neck. Instant kitty! Kawaii!! =^_^=

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