Sewing Halloween Costumes #2

Can't a man just procrastinate in peace? Can't he? No, no around here he can't. As usual I had my grand plans for Halloween costumes. I had patterns, I had fabric, I was ready to go. All I needed was some time pressure to really get me going. That required me waiting until Halloween was so close that there was a chance that I might not finish. It's how I work best, and my wife totally ruined it.
I went away for one day to autocross and she got basically the whole fair lady costume done. Cut out the patterns, cut out the fabric and pieces and pretty much sewed everything but the sleeves. How am I supposed to write a blog post about putting together an awesome dress when it's already put together? Gah! I can't, I just can't. So what I'm giving you is a picture of said gown. It's perfect. It's beautiful, and it's done. No thanks to me.
Moving on, I have a few tunics to make. One is for your basic Viking, and the other is for a middle ages warrior peasant girl. These have been assigned to me, and these I shall make. They are both extremely simple, but both require a bit of extra work. The pattern I'm using is the same one as the knight tunic that we're making for my youngest. That tunic has sleeves that are made of shiny stretchy material that is supposed to approximate the look of chain mail. They're pretty narrow. The two tunics I need to make need wider sleeves. The also need to be bigger for the bigger kids and they need to be longer. Because my wife didn't want to live in a world dominated by my procrastination, she asked me to copy the patterns in the size that I need so she could cut them down and use them for the smaller costume. This is a pretty good time to mention that the package of patterns you bought has a bunch of sizes in it. You need to measure you child and figure out which one you need and cut out all of the pieces that are that size. This pattern has one front, one back, two sleeves, and a narrow band of fabric for the neck.
Click through the jump and I'll give a walkthrough of my day of sewing.

This sewing project starts like all of them. The fabric has been washed and ironed and is laid out. For the front and back, you fold the fabric over and pin the pattern with the center over the fold. That way when you cut it out, you get a perfectly symmetric piece. I knew I needed to make it longer than the pattern, but I didn't know how much longer. I just made it a lot longer. It's easier to take material away than add it.

Here I have all of the pieces cut. One front. One back, two arms and a narrow piece of fabric to reinforce the neck called bias tape.

Step one is to sew across the shoulders, so I did. Remember, always pin the outsides in and together. That way when you turn it inside out the outside is on the outside and the seams are on the inside. Once I had done this I took a look at it. The head hole looked small. I tried it on my daughter and it was in fact small. Too small, it wouldn't fit. Curious. I actually had to do what I always recommend and read the directions. It turns out that this tunic is designed to be split up the back and have velcro installed to take in on and off. That makes sense I suppose, but I don't want to use Velcro. I'll get a zipper at the store on Monday which means that I can't finish this today. Bummer.  The upside is that I get to show you how to install zippers. Cool.

After splitting the tunic up the back, it was time to reinforce the neck. This is done with something called bias tape. As far as I can tell, the whole point of bias tape is simply for reinforcement of fabric, especially when it's cut in curves. When a fabric is cut straight across the grain, it's pretty strong. When you cut it diagonally (on the bias), it loses a lot of strength and tends to tear easily and stretch all weird. Necks are pretty much always a curve, so they pretty much always require some reinforcement in the form of bias tape. They sell bias tape at fabric stores in about a million colors so you can pretty much always find a match, or you can make it out of the fabric you have like I did here. For this, you sew the fabric strip to the front, iron it over, and sew it again. It's not terribly complicated once you've seen it once and the diagrams with the pattern will almost certainly explain it. I'll give a closeup when I'm done, it looks nice and it's strong.

After the neck, the sleeves need to be sewed on. There's not much to show at this step and I forgot to take a picture, but it's not too complicated. Line things up and sew them. At this point, in theory, all there is to do is sew up the sides and along the bottom of the sleeves and we're done. Before that final sewing is a great time to do a little test fitting. When I did that my daughter said the the sleeves were going to be too narrow, she wanted them baggier. This is where it become apparent that it's much easier to take fabric away than it is to add it. Adding it is a pain. Back to the extra fabric to cut out a long three inch strip to add to the bottom of each sleeve. You can see it sewn in place in the picture. The fit was approved and it's pinned and sewn. All that needs to be done now is to put the zipper in and hem the sleeves and the bottom.
You might notice that I've already test fit this very simple tunic 3 or 4 times. Test fitting at many stages of construction is valuable. It keeps you from missing steps or sewing something that later needs to be ripped out. It's always easier to alter a garment before you've sewn it. I'll try to get the rest of the tunic done soon and move on to the belt and arm guards and accessories that will turn a mild mannered girl into a dangerous warrior peasant.
So far I'm into this Halloween costume $7 for fabric and three hours of time. Worth it? It will be.