..."You don't vote for king!"
For two months, I've been asking my brother who he wanted to go as to the Kings and Queens Ball. We brainstormed several off-beat, slightly geekier characters that suited him, but beyond that, he never committed to any one costume. At least, that's how I perceived it. He says that he told me that he wanted to be King Arthur from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I never caught that; family communication at its finest!
Anyway...
It was the Tuesday before the Saturday event, when I finally translated the message. Could I put together an entire costume from scratch in less than a week? Only time would tell.
I already had the pattern, thanks to High King Peter's costume. Mccall's 5500 was waiting for me in its pattern bin. I had a white sheet stashed away and some gold fabric left over from a different project. :BOOM!: Let's do this.
The costume itself went together very easily since I had done a similar costume so recently. ;) Then it was on to the applique on the front. Since drawing does not come naturally to me, I needed to find someone else's work to use. I found a picture on Deviant Art that suited my purposes.
Some double sided fusible interfacing, ironing, machine zig-zagging, and embroidery later, the applique was done. After picking up the necessary trims from the craft store, the main part of the costume was finished. Woohoo!
My poor dress form isn't liking all these men's costumes that I've been making of late. ;)
Now it was time to accessorize. The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch was certainly a needed prop. We painted a styrofoam ball gold, tacky-glued fancy trims that I already had, and stuck on a gold cross that we found in the bead section (that's a scary part of the store... How someone can find one thing in there is beyond me. Although I guess some would say the same thing about the notions wall or the fabric section. ;) ).
I used a similar technique that I used for the Narnian crown for King Arthur's crown. I printed up a template that I found somewhere on the interwebs, cut it out of foam (the pliable stuff that kids use in their Sunday school crafts), painted it, and glued the pieces together. Then I used the pattern that I made for Oaken's hat to make a gray insert to go inside the gold outer crown. For the 'chain mail' cascading from the back of the crown, I found some cool gold sequined material that resembled chain mail. Cut it to length, sewed it onto the insert, and Voila! Behold, a crown. Alack alas, I haven't gotten pictures of just the crown. Oh well.
And it all finished just in time. The last coat of paint for the crown was applied on Saturday morning. The ball was on Saturday evening. I DID IT! xD Granted, not much else had been done that week, but the costume was finished in time. We added some leather gloves that we found at the thrift store to finish the look.
The funniest part of all of this was the reaction of our friend, Nathan. He saw the picture that I posted on Facebook, and he shot me a message practically begging to be Patsy, King Arthur's faithful servant. On Saturday afternoon, he managed to pull together the costume with things that he already had. He made a fine Patsy if I do say so myself. They 'rode' around the ballroom for kicks with King Arthur pretending to ride a horse and Patsy clopping the coconut halves together.
What was truly hilarious was everyone's reactions. Not many of our peers caught the reference, but their parents thought that it was the best thing ever. It was described as 'classic.'
I think that those two are ready for comic con. Maybe 'riding' around Portland will be enough for now. We need to do our part to 'keep it weird.' :P
Until next time!
SG
