Monster Hoodies complete

Material purchased, and sketch complete, it's time to get down to work. I have become rather ambitious with this project, but I thought I could get all of it in. With the sketch above I was able to get all the details I listed earlier in one view.  Most can see that it's meant to be a dragon, and D&D nerds should be able to tell that its a chromatic RED dragon.

The belly scales are split into two colors; Yellow for the belly scales proper, and orange for a transition to the rest of the body. The yellow scales I cut out individually, overlapped them, and sewed them on. Fortunately there weren't too many.This way the scales shift just a bit when the wearer moves, but not so much that they're in danger of tearing or anything. I ran a single seam along the scalloped outside edge, securing them to the orange scales.

The orange transition scales are a single piece on either side, with the "scales" drawn in with an embroidery stitch. This process I thought would be faster than cutting out scales like with the yellow scales, but it was actually a lot slower, as my sewing machine stitches in this pattern at a snail's pace.

Next were the horns. there were 16 horns in all; 3 claws on each hand, 1 elbow spike on each arm, 3 small horns on each side of the hood at the neck, and 2 large back-swept horns on the top of the head. These were actually the easiest part. I just sketched out one sample of each size, played with the stitching and curves until I liked it, then cut out the other copies I needed. Sewing them was fast and easy.  Their position on the hoodie was difficult to get the sewing machine situated, so I opted to hand sew them on.

After the horns were attached, all that was left was the spine and tail. The tail itself was easy, using leftover felt from the belly scales. The back spines I thought would be rather complex, and after multiple designs to try to keep the spines plushy and full and the webbing between them thin without too much sewing, Jenn offered he perfect solution. Instead of cutting out each spine and each webbing section, I just drew out the entire spine piece on the fabric. I cut out a single big piece for each side, and ran a stitch along the top; from the first big spine all the way to the tip of the tail, and flipped it and ironed it flat. After that it was a matter of sewing a stitch along the outline of each webbing section; up along one side of a spine, along the top of the webbing edge, and back down along the other spine it connected to. Rinse. Repeat. This left the webbing and spines separated by the seams, which were then stuffed with batting. The end result was Simple and exactly what I was looking for. To finish it off, I bought some fabric markers and added some shading and texture to the webbing, adding contrast between them and the spines and making them more dynamic.

Here's the finished piece. I'm very happy with how it turned out. now to ship it out to Jezebel and see how she likes it. 

New Project : Monster Hoodies

This is more the continuation of a project I completed for Jenn a few weeks ago. Many of my friends in San Diego saw her rocking her "monster" hoodie; a purple unicorn hoodie, complete with spiral silver horn, fetlock cuffs, and a mane ending in tail.

 This project was easier than I thought it would be. It took a little creative problem solving to design and sew the spiral into the silver fabric. The hardest part was figuring out how to attach the horn to the hood without cutting away from the hood or sewing the bottom of the horn flat. After a couple of failed tries, I was able to sew the horn to a separate piece of purple velour, attach that to the velour border of the mane (just a folded strip of white faux fur), then sew the whole thing down the back of the hoodie.

 Jenn, unsurprisingly enough, flipped out when she saw it in its finished form. She loves it, but it's not warm enough to wear in cold weather or rain.

 I had a lot of fun making it, and wanted to do it again, this time actually creating a monster. Jezebel, Mike's daughter, has a birthday coming up, and she seemed to like the unicorn hoodie. I know she's been getting into Dungeons and Dragons recently, so I'm going to make a monster hoodie for her with that as a theme.

Here's my reference and inspiration; The Red Dragon. Classic D&D monster. And since each dragon in the game has it's own look and anatomy, it will be a fun challenge to make the hoodie look like a RED DRAGON, and not just a dragon that happens to be red.

I've boiled down the features I want to include in the hoodie;
 - The large swept back horns
 - The smaller horns along the jawline
 - The light-colored scales along the belly
- The fin-like spines along the back and tail
 - MAYBE: the big ear-fins on the sides of its face. 

I bought the fabric and hoodie already. Now to just sketch out how I want to actually do this. I can't realistically cut out individual scales, and if I stuff the back part too much, the hoodie will be uncomfortable when sitting against a chair or couch. Jenn's suggestion is to use a fabric pen and draw the scales on the lighter fabric, and maybe silk-screen the patches of scales on the sides and back. I think the silk screen is a great idea, but if I can, I would prefer to have a physical separation of the scales on the front belly sales. They're much larger than the sides, so I don't need as many, and they're the part she can see when she's wearing it. Hmm.

Mario Tree Complete

Jenn and I found a tree to start decorating.

Or rather, we found a tree that we can make acceptable to decorate. I'll elaborate. She wanted to shop for a 4 foot tree we can set up in the foyer. Jenn was convinced that the best trees are at a specific tree lot near her parents house, on the other side of town. Knowing that I was going to be enlisted to help (if it involves moving large or heavy things, the default is getting Dameon to move it), I did a little research.

The tree lot  is owned by a company that sets up these lots all over town. All over, apparently, except downtown. On their website was a map showing a ring of lots around the city, leaving a big empty space in the middle. In the center of this space is where we live. Oddly, Joanne's fabrics stores are roughly on this ring as well, and many gaming stores. Wierd.

Anyway, we found a different lot closer to some errands we were running, so decided to try that one. While running errands, Jenn became frustrated because we were running low on time in the day and gave up and decided we're going to Home Depot for the tree after all.

We get to HD, and all but the largest trees are already taken. Jenn is stomping around, muttering about how we should have gone to the other lot by her parent's place, while I was trying to find a more creative solution.

I noticed that there was  cutting station at one end of the lot, where employees will make a fresh cut on the bottom of the tree before wrapping it up in plastic for transportation. I walked up to the guy with the chainsaw (his nametag read Steven), and told him our story. I asked him if it was possible to take one of the larger trees and cut it down to 4 feet. I told him that I know that the taller one's are nearly twice as expensive, but Jenn's heart is set on a small tree and I REALLY didn't want to come out on a second trip in a few days. Steven said he would do it, and just let him know when we had decided on a tree.

I explained my arrangement to Jenn, who immediately chilled the hell out and we went about choosing a tree that could be cut down to size. We found it, and Steven cut it (though not without a considerable amount of extra work on his end), and we went home. Thanks Steven!

So here's the tree, set up in our foyer, bookended by my mannequins.

Next was to finish the myriad ornaments and make a garland.

For the garland, Jenn had the idea of having brick and question blocks running around the tree. I thought it was awesome. We found some small flat-packed card-stock gift boxes and Jenn made the templates for the bricks and question blocks in Illustrator. We printed them out at Kinko's and got to work. The garland however was not fun to make. 100 separate boxes, each needing to be assembled, their individual template cut out, glued to the box, and strung up. It took 2 days, nearly non-stop to complete. It looks awesome, but I wouldn't want to do it again.




  



















The ornaments were fun, but there were a lot of them. Mushrooms, pixel art, shells, etc. Jenn joked on several occasions about giving up and just filling in what space was left with traditional ornaments. I was committed to this project though. So we bought more FunFusion beads, and looked up more power up mushrooms, and painted, and sanded, and cut, and ironed, and glued. For 2 weeks after work and over the last couple weekends.

Finally, this morning, I finished the last of the hanging ornaments. All that's left is the tree-topper.  Jenn made a pixel-art Princess Peach, but just in case I can't get our first idea working.


Here's the tree currently. It's fully decorated, with Peach as a stand in until I can make a lighted Mario star.

Winning Super Mario Bros 1, a reenactment

Lakitu, throwin' down Spinys

 

Bullet Bill, Mario's hat, Bee and Boo shrooms

Oh, I'm sorry, were you in 1st place in Mario Kart? Too bad, eat this Blue Shell.

Aaahh! Chomp Chain!

Tanooki leaf, Beetle, Spring and 1-up shrooms

Super, Poison, Propeller, and Gold Shrooms.

It'sa Luigi time!

Pixel Frog Suit and POW block

Green Shell, Rock Shroom, and Pixel Fire Flower

Boo Mario and Fire Flower

Pixel Peach

Mario Tree pt 2

So crafting is full steam ahead for the Mario tree. I have collected the styrofoam balls I needed, cut them and covered them in mod podge, and sanded them smooth for prep for the painting.  I was going to paint a flat white acrylic paint for the base coat, but there's a lot of them, and I think spraypaint will give a much more smooth, even coat to work with.  Off to the store for spraypaint...




Jenn had purchased 2 new crafting mediums I haven't had any experience with, Pluffy and Crayola . Both are super light and airy, so they have very little weight and will hange from the tree very well.

The down side to this is that their lack of weight makes it rather difficult to mold them. When I try to adjust one side of a piece, the entire opposite side deforms. It requires the delicate touch of a child. Or maybe just not my brute force method of solving physical problems.

Left : Comp Chain head. Right : Beetle.

Jenn came home last night after a night with her friend Cat (not Kat, Rich's girlfriend), and came home with a couple new pieces for the tree.  She had fashioned a Beetle and Chomp Chain head from the Crayola craft foam. It looked really good! I never even considered adding the Beetle enemy as a possible ornament. I was impressed.

New Project : Mario Tree

Last year I tried to make a Super Mario-themed tree topper; a yellow star made from vinyl and LEDs. It was a failure.

This year, Jennifer proposed making Mario ornaments for the xmas tree. I told her it was a fun idea, and I was okay with it. We talked it over, trying to decide which characters, enemies, and items would be best for this project. Eventually we decided that the best way to do this is to decorate the tree ENTIRELY with Mario ornaments. Mostly, "we decided" involved me badgering Jenn until she relented, but I digress.

So we went to Michaels and gathered some supplies. Styrofoam balls, Paint and brushes, airy light craft foam, plastic beads for pixel art, etc.

The craft foam/clay and styrofoam bits are still being worked on, but the plastic bead crafts were very fast and easy. Plastic pixel art is super fun, and we warned each other not to get too crazy with it, or else we might just forget the other projects and just fill the tree with these.

Well, here's what we have finished so far. We just need to add hooks, and a tree to hang them from.

Starring in this line up; (left to right)

Mario
Fire Flower
Cape feather
Spiny
Lakitu

Aviator Headphones Pt. 2

So I had my materials, and it was time to try to figure out how to color the lining. The sheepskin fur was very long and shaggy, which I was initially super stoked about. I though coloring all of it may be an issue, as the base of the strands was very thick and dense. Alternately, the faux sheepskin I got from Joannes was MUCH easier to deal with, but it was polyester, which Rit dye isn't fond of.

Additionally, I still hadn't decided which method to use for coloring the liners; Fabric dye or hair dye. So I decided to experiment with both to see which came out better. I cut 2 bits from the sheepskin and 2 from the faux liner, and separated them into a matrix. Each of the 2 types of lining would be treated with each of the 2 types of coloring.  Like so --->

oops. Sorry Jenn.

I didn't take a picture of the hair dye on the liners, but here's me ruining Jennifer's cooking pot. I thought it was fine after washing it several times, but the next time we used it for pasta, the water was red and I could taste the dye residue, so I trashed it and promised to replace it.

Here's how they turned out. It was obvious that one was the clear winner. I was quite surprised by the results, as the other three combinations failed so completely.

Once dried, the skin side was very wrinkled, but not so much that the total surface area had shrunken significantly. The wool was an awesome crimson color. I was super excited. Now to do it to the other pieces.

I modded a fabric pattern for a hunter/bombers cap from Threadbanger. You can check out the video for that project HERE.  I used to love that site and their video projects, but the original people who ran it aren't there anymore,  and the new ones, while fine crafters, no longer suit my style. Check them out anyway, you might find something you dig.

I cut out all the pieces out of the sheepskin and leather and started sewing them together. I started to become worried that I may have misjudged the necessary seam allowance for this project, as the leather outer shell was becoming increasingly tighter as I was assembling the pieces. By the time I finished the outer leather shell, It barely fit on my skull, and I needed to force it to fit at all. There was no way I could wear this hat as it was, not to mention the massive bulk of the dense skeepskin liner. I considered tearing up up and starting over, or splitting the seams and adding spacing strips. Fortunately Rich offered to pay me to finish the hat as it was, add the faux liner, and sell it to him so he can give it to his girlfriend Kat. I agreed. This was the more labor-intensive option, but it let me recoup some of the costs of the project. I put the shell aside and started over.


The second shell was much better, and there was plenty of room for liner. It was a good thing that Rich wanted the faux liner, because I didn't have enough sheepskin to cut new pieces. I also was out of Dye, so I had to make do with what I had. This introduced a new problem. My original pieces for the sheepskin (already cut, dyed, and dried out) were for the original size of the hat, not the newer, larger version. There was no way I could sew them together and make them fit.

I made my way back to the Leather Factory to consult the experts. They were very patient, but it was clear they were amused by my problem. I was obviously not getting something basic. Finally they asked "why don't you just glue the sheepskin to the leather rather than sew it together? It's so dense no one will notice that they are separate pieces." I honestly hadn't thought of that. I was still thinking about the fabric bomber hat I was basing my pattern on, which was sewn rather than glued. But leather can be glued easily. I bought some leather cement and went home.

I finished my outer shell and carefully glued the sheepskin liner pieces to the inside. This was messy at first, until I thought of reversing the hat and stretching it over one of the leftover pumpkins we never carved. That made things much easier. Once the glue was set and the hat was ready to be modeled, it was clear I had another problem; it didn't fit on my head. The sheepskin was so thick that there was just no room in there for anyone's head, let alone my big skull. Despite my eagerness to keep the long fluffy wool, I was going to have to trim it down. And down. And down some more.

I was still trimming as Jenn was packing for the trip to San Diego for my birthday. I was excited to show off my new project and I was damned if I wasn't going to be able to wear it while I was out there. So I kept trimming it until the damn thing fit. It was still dense and so warm I worried about EVER being able to wear it in Phoenix (did, but I was sweaty the whole time. Worth it, though.).

Ace Combat Pilot "mad" Mike Mcgillicutty

 Here's Mike in San Diego modeling the hat with the aviator goggles. The edges aren't hemmed yet, but you get a really good idea of what it will look like when completed.

Next up...Completing the project.