So to finish from my earlier post, Sunday we ran errands, and packed. And I ran over to Kevin’s house and picked him up so we could go over his Link costume stuff. He hasn’t worn it since 2013, so we needed to make sure everything still fit and worked ok. He’s wearing it to Mickey’s Not So Scary thursday and I didn’t want to get there and discover his pants no longer fit!
First up I gave him the Link shield backpack we got for him a few weeks ago:
Originally he was going to be Jack Sparrow for MNSSHP. But when I saw this backpack on clearance at Thinkgeek, we realized he could wear Link with that really easily, and he’d be much happier since Link is his favourite.
I had to take up his hat a little bit, since we decided he’d go wigless for the Halloween party and his head is a lot smaller without a wig LOL
I found his ears, which he was missing in 2013, and added his Luke belt pouch to this belt.
When I was cleaning my office I also came across one of his missing arm cuffs. He hasn’t had all 4 cuffs since he first wore it in 2004, and the past few times he’s worn it, he’s only had 2. So now we had 3… and last week at the trade show I used up a roll of tape and realized it was the perfect size to make into cuff #4. It’s not exactly the same – I didn’t have anymore of the faux leather I used to cover them in 2004 (I mean, I hoard stuff, but that faux leather was long gone), so I just painted it to match and it looks pretty decent at a glance. Especially since I repainted the remaining 3 as well – darker, to match his gloves better.
Tunic, undershirt and pants all fit fine. Yay!
The biggest update I wanted to make were to the boot covers. I have always disliked the floppy boot covers. I bought them for him off ebay back in like, 2007 I think? And they were just generic and never fit his foot well. So I decided what I’d do is remove the foot portion. Then he could wear his Doctor Who boots, and I’d paint the uppers to match the Doctor Who boots. It worked pretty well! And now he doesn’t have the foot portions of the boot covers flopping around.
Now he just needs a shave and he’s ready to go.
And now I’ve just realized that I have never posted any of my new parasol progress pics??
I said I wasn’t going to try to make a new parasol for Tightrope Walker until like, next year, but you know how sometimes something grabs ahold of you and says “YOU MUST DO IT NOW”? Yeah well I bought a cheap-o $11 parasol on amazon (free shipping!).
It came apart shockingly easy… though I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised for $11. LIke literally within 60 seconds of opening the box it came in, I’d ripped the top bobble off, the handle, the spindle edges and the fabric, leaving only the metal skeleton.
I had some pink lining-like material that I was hoping to use – if I could manage to strip some of the dye off, which was questionable because I’m pretty sure it was 100% poly. It was bordering on slightly too “hot” pink, that was the only problem. But of course the dye remover didn’t do a thing, and so I went with my backup plan – I had some of the pink fabric leftover from my 2007 Belle’s “Something There” dress. Again the pink was slightly wrong, so I threw a yard or so of it into the leftover dye remover. It stripped probably 70% of the colour off, leaving me with a nice base to redye it. I dyed it in a mix of… hm I think it was Scarlet, Tan, and maybe a little Petal Pink? I was really happy with the resulting colour – that’s the finished product sitting next to the skeleton, above.
I used the un-dyeable lining material to make the mockup. I cut out one segment of the original lace parasol fabric to use as a pattern, and then made the mock-up based on that.
I thought I’d uploaded all of these photos to my smugmug but apparently not, I had to steal this off my own instagram.
Once I could tell that the mockup seemed to work ok, I removed one panel from it and used that as a pattern for cutting my dyed fabric. Got those panels sewed together, and then placed onto the skeleton. I whip-stitched the edges of the fabric around the edges of the frame, enough to hold it in place while the parasol was fully open. Then I hemmed it by hand, and further re-inforced the stitching at the ends of the spindles. I had originally intended to glue the original spindle edges back on (they would’ve been hidden by the lace trim), but they no longer fit, and everything seemed to be working fine without them, so into the trash they went.
I also added some clear-drying glue to the end of each spindle, just to harden the fabric and hopefully give it a little more strength. I ended up doing a few more stitches further up each spindle, just to make sure they stayed in place.
I had this lace in my stash and thankfully it was enough to to the whole edge. I hand sewed it in place and it was done! I repainted the top bobble black, and glued back onto the top of the parasol.
Chase painted the handle black for me, and we also went out and found a wooden dowel to use as the extended handle, along with a silver knob for the end. He drilled a whole into the dowel that the end of the parasol fits into perfectly, painted it black, and attached the knob. It comes apart for easier packing.
The finished product, yay!
Looks like I’m going to need it Thursday too, thanks to the stupid hurricane. Fingers crossed the hurricane veers off the coast… not just for a dumb Halloween party but also, obv, because nobody wants a hurricane going up the coast.