2015 Halloween was approaching and although my costume was going to be quite simple to put together, Clive's was a bit more elaborate and demanding to make. I needed a bit more time to work on it...so as September was drawing to a close and Autumn was moving in, I set about it. I love all the costumes I've made over the years...but Clive's Scarecrow costume turned out to be one of my all time favourites...and most fun to make!
It is this costume I'm going to concentrate on blogging about for you now (I'll do a short blog post on my clown costume later on)...it has so many parts, so I will be spitting it up into individual posts per element. I took an awful lot of photos, so can share quite detailed step by step process with you.
First, for this post, we will look at the basic clothing.
Scarecrows wear quite old distressed clothing - they've been made out of old clothes in the first place, then out there in the farmers fields in the elements so it's quite obvious they're going to look aged and tatty! I raided Clive's cupboard for his really old faded gardening trousers, and then found a perfect navy blue fishermans knit style jumper in a charity shop for £3. A couple of plastic rats from a pound shop, some remnants of hessian fabric, jute twine, glue, sewing kit, paint, and a bag of straw...and I was ready to start work!
The jumper got the distressing treatment first...a bit of rubbing in with some dust and dirt to make it look a bit faded, then I set about ripping at the hem and cuffs with a seam stripper.
Easy does it with the ripping!
I did worry at one point that the whole thing would unravel and Clive would end up bare chested and one chilly scarecrow mid party....but it actually proved to hold together well (and I did craftily put in a few hidden stitches with matching cotton thread...just to secure it)...phew!
I roughly tacked on some patches of hessian fabric.
Hessian plays quite a part in this whole costume...as you will see in later posts. I buy amounts of this from ebay on a regular basis for my crafting and artwork so always have it to hand. It's a bit pongy, even new and makes a mess, so if you use it...be mindful of that.
I stitched in elbow patches and one larger patch to the front of the jumper, plus added some large crude cross stitches with jute twine.
Next, I took one of the plastic rats...and sliced off it's head and tail with a Stanley knife...lovely lady aren't I lol!
The plastic rats looked a bit shiny so I dulled them down with a coat of black acrylic paint, and added a bit more red to their eyes.
The 'whole rat' got a noose collar to hang off the belt.
I made a hole in the large hessian patch on the front of the jumper (easy to do...just push aside the threads, it such an open weave it's very easy to manipulate) and tucked some straw, and then the rats head into the patch, which now acts as a pocket, and the tail was glued to the other side...so it looks like the rat is coming out of the scarecrows body.
I then dry brushed some sandy grey coloured acrylic paints over the jumper to make it look even more dusty and dirty. One jumper complete!
Next task...the trousers!
These were super faded to start with but needed distressing...so again it was out with the seam ripper and scissors.
The hems got cut and frayed.
The legs got some big rips added (don't worry, in places that didn't expose Clive in unacceptable ways...it's a family party, that sort of thing is not allowed lol ;) )...
...and some hessian patches added to match those on the jumper.
I tacked in strips of hessian to the hemlines of each leg
and then glued in pieces of straw. This was quite fiddly....it helped to pad out the trousers with some bubble wrap which kept the leg end open while the glue dried.
No need for neatness and tidy work here....the messier, the better! I then took some watered down brown paint and worked it over all the hessian bits to make it look more grubby.
So that's it for now, jumper and trousers done....in part 2 I'll show you how I made gloves and his hat.
(NOTE - total cost, materials used, time taken etc will be listed on the last post for this costume make)
No comments:
Post a Comment