Marty and Mike Wazowski - Costumes: Part 7
As was discussed here (
link) and here (
link) and here (
link) the Mike and Marty costumes we've been working on may or may not meet the costume guidelines for the upcoming runDisney race season. We'll cross that bridge when it comes. But as of today, we are going to forge ahead on making the "A" costumes and then have a back-up "B" costume ready and prepared in case we need to pivot.
We're kind of all over the place at the current moment in regards to the progress of the costumes. We have several different parts of the project at different points in the completion process. Because I have small bits of time here or there and work on the googely eyes or the hats, or large blocks of time and work on the base of the costume. So for ease of reading, I'll focus only on a single portion of the project all the while keeping in mind that other things are occurring concurrently.
As we last left off, we were happy with how the front of my costume looked (
link), but not with G's costume (
link). G's costume looked more like a pumpkin and was quite heavy relatively speaking. Mine had a rounded but smooth appearance and was far lighter. The difference was in the batting being used. G's was light weight, but had little to no rigidity. My foam was a little less light, but had more rigidity. So where we had to stuff G's costume full to give it a full appearance, we could instead use the more rigid panels of foam to hold shape in mine. Thereby having to use less, relatively speaking. The issue was, we weren't exactly sure what the brand of foam was that I ended up using because it was scraps from a project my SIL was doing. All she could remember was that they had planned on using it for outdoor furniture. So using that info I tracked down an outdoor furniture batting at Jo-Anns to see whether that would be what we wanted to use for G's costume.
This is the Nu-Foam we ended up going with (
link). It comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some in roll form, some in squares, a variety of lengths and widths and depths. Based on my costume foam, we went with 1 inch thick. The 24 in width worked, because each of G's panels were 12-13 inches thick at the widest. So we could do two panels side-by-side with this width foam. We removed all the excess foam in G's costume and only kept the two layers of original foam as we had previously designed the costumes. It looked like this.
Just goes to show how truly stuffed the costume was, because that looks more like a deflated balloon than a pumpkin at this point. We cut each of the panels to size, and then inserted them into G's costume. This was the result.
Quite a big difference. The rigidity of the foam makes all the difference. And this design is much much lighter.
One thing that's important to point out. There's a fine balance on the size of the panel and the look. If you make the foam panel the same size as the cutouts then the foam tends to bow inside the costume. This gives it a weird appearance, and not like the smooth flat structure we're aiming for. So because of that, you need to cut maybe 1-1.5 inches off the width of the panels of foam for it to fit seamlessly.
Now it was time to sew the collar and elastic bottom onto each of the costumes. I'll admit it. I didn't fully appreciate just how difficult this was going to be. At issue was, we couldn't remove the foam to sew the collar/elastic on. The foam is quite finicky and my arms aren't long enough (or thin enough in G's case) to flatten it out to maintain that rigid structure. So because of that, we couldn't sew one side shut, then fill with foam, then sew the other side. Both the collar and elastic on while the costume was in it's full state.
As I wrote breifly elsewhere, the total process for my collar/elastic took about 5 hours and was a three person job. The second time around on G's costume I assumed would go quicker because we knew what we were doing, but also hoped easier because it was smaller. But it being smaller actually created additional problems. Her's took me about 3 hours to complete. I didn't take a ton of pictures during this process (admittedly because I was getting very frustrated), so I'll be jumping back and forth between the two costumes to try and give a full picture of what we did.
The first part that was necessary was cutting back some of the foam from the top and bottom of each of our costumes. This allowed some space where it could be sewn fabric to fabric and not have the foam pushing around. Remember, it's rigid, so it doesn't want to stay where it doesn't want to go. Which makes it a challenge when you're trying to not get it in the way of the sew job. The first task was to make the collar.
The sewing pattern we bought had the collar has a pattern. So we copied that and used that. We left a little extra on the top so that we could sew the fold down for a clean edge. Turns out that our changes to the foam structure also meant that our collar needed to be slightly longer. So we had to go back and remake the collar piece because it needed to be longer. The frustration came in that this collar piece needs to be small enough that you can tighten the cord/string on the inside to bunch the costume at the top. But it also can't be too small such that the cord/string can be pulled through it. Well I left a little extra room, and others thought that was too much extra. So we went slightly smaller and this burned us later.
The hardest part was sewing the collar to the base costume itself. The collar is a circular pattern on the inside of a foam structure that has a non-zero weight and is somewhat rigid and wants to hold a structure. I initially aimed to do this solo by placing the sewing machine at the far side of the table and then resting the costume on the table itself. All the while rotating the costume and keeping the collar on track. I didn't even get started with this technique before it became quite clear this would never work. So we then pivoted to having a 2nd person hold the costume while on the table and rotating it. This worked some, but the issue was that the angle for the sewing of the collar never really aligned with where the costume was. Towards the middle/end we found that hanging the costume off the table, and having the sewing machine teetering off the edge of the table allowed enough space for the collar to be sewn. Issue was that the second person now needed to hold the costume in a static position while also rotating the costume along at the same pace as the sewing machine operator. If it sounds overly complex, it's because it was. Was there potentially an easier way to do this? Probably. But at least for this rag tag bunch this is what we came up with.
One issue we had was that we were in essence sewing three portions of fabric together on the initial sew. The non-hemmed collar side (the hem was on the outer downside away from the costume opening such that when it was inverted it would show a clean line), and the two pieces of fabric that make up the inner and outer layer of the base costume. Well those three despite being pinned didn't always want to align in the midst of our two person rotating job. Which means the initial sew job had to be done 2-3 times on the Mike costume because we would finish and then fine gaps where all three pieces didn't come together.
While we thought the hard part was behind us when we finally sewed the non-hemmed collar to the outside of the costume, the real challenge was sewing the hemmed collar to the inside of the costume. Because instead of hanging down and sewing at the top of the circle, now we needed to be above the sewing machine and sew at the bottom of the circle. This made for quite the challenge as I was left with limited space to work with on the inside of the costume, while ensuring we left enough space for the cord/string to be pulled through. Ultimately, after 2-3 repeat sew jobs we did eventually get it all sealed up.
Now came stringing the cord/string through. We had purchased a 1/2 in thick green cord to be used (as per instructions). Steph attached a safety pin to one end of the cord to pull it through. She made it about 10% of the way, and then the safety pin and cord became disconnected. And the space inside was so ridiculously tight that the safety pin was stuck inside the collar. After quite a long time, she did eventually get the safety pin out. The issue was the cord would fray and then the safety pin would detach. She tried taping them together, but it didn't work. So we had to ditch the cord and went with a thinner ribbon string that Heidi had laying around as option B. This did eventually work, but I would say it probably took a good 25-30 min of threading it through the collar a good 1/8 in at a time.
With the collar finally finished, the costume looked like this:
Now it was time for the bottom of the costume. Because the collar gave us so many issues, we troubleshooted whether there was anything we could change for the next part. We ended up deciding on sewing the panels together first as that would enable us only to have to sew two things together instead of three. As you can see here in G's costume:
This ended up being a big help.
For the bottom layer, we were using Wrights Double Fold Quilt Binding Bias tape 1/2 inch x 3 yard - x3 Kiwi and x3 Orange (
link). The debate was whether we should double fold it over for the purpose of sewing, or maybe leave a little extra room to pull through the elastic. On my costume (which we did first) we doubled it over, and the pull job was really tight. On G's we left a little extra and the pull job was slightly easier.
Ultimately, we used the same scheme as the collar. Except this time we sewed the panels together first. Then we sewed the non-hemmed bias tape to the costume, and then folded it over to create the gap for the elastic.
Then we pulled the elastic through.
While we thought G's costume would be easier because it was smaller, it was actually more challenging in the collar region because it was smaller and there was less space to work with. Where we could drape my costume around the sewing machine, we actually had to sew her costume blind on the inner stitch because I had to work on the outside of the costume instead of the inside. So I only had the pins to guide me as to whether I was actually sewing to anything on the other side. Suffice to say it was tough, but doable. It did cause some tearing in the neck region of her costume because we were stretching it quite hard to get the sew job done on the collar.
All along the way I was thinking to myself, why did we even do the collar and elastic bottom. Honestly, was the 8 hrs of work even worth it? Why not just sew the two panels together and call it a day. Well, after we saw the final product it became more clear why.
The collar and elastic really emphasize the rounded shape of the costume. And there's been a lot of progress to make it more Marty and Mike like. So yes. The collar and elastic were very very frustrating and felt like they took forever to execute, but at the end of the day, it was worth it.
So if you squint real hard, are you starting to see a Marty and Mike standing in front of you?
Next up -
Part 8
Overcast clouds, Wind 8mph to ?
