Mario and Luigi

This Halloween, I decided to put together Mario and Luigi (from the Super Mario Brothers video games) as our couples costume. It turned out marvelously. Everyone recognized us, and the costumes were easy to wear.

We bought the shirts (and one of the hats) so there were really only two things to make – the second hat, and the overalls.

I found this overall pattern, and made it out of two bedsheets. I ignored the pockets. I made the straps and, after pinning them in place and seeing that we could easily get in and out of them, just stitched them permanently to the body of the overalls. The buttons were made from plastic caps, but you could also use yellow foam rubber. I added black yarn, to make the “stitching” on the buttons obvious – but they are actually sewn into place from behind, using the yarn as the anchor.

I picked up the Mario hat in a thrift store by chance. After looking at it, I saw that it was a basic newsboy cap, and found these simple instructions for making a newsboy cap. I pretty much followed them to the letter, although instead of the measurements they suggested, I took the general sizes off the Mario cap. The round badge is just a piece of white fabric with the letter L drawn on it with green marker.

And for the mustache? I bought a child’s fake fur coat in a thrift shop for $3, cut out a mustache, and glued it in place with spirit gum. Easy peasy.

Lace 1980’s Accessories: The gloves

I’ve been on several 1980’s cruises, and many of the women wear fingerless fishnet gloves around the ship. You know, because … 1980’s. I wanted something a little bit different, so I made some lace fingerless gloves (and matching belt and scrunchie) out of some lacy lingerie that I got at a thrift shop. I thought I’d share my process with you, in case you wanted to make some, too. I’m not going to say that it’s the BEST method. But it’s pretty straightforward, and I’m pleased with the result.  Originally, I thought that I might sell these as a set in my Etsy store, but I’m not sure yet. Let me know what you think.


The first step is to buy some garments made out of stretch lace. It’s important that it’s stretchy. I found several.

The first thing that I did – after choosing which garment to start with – was measure my arm. I measured the distance around my hand, so I’d know how big to make that end of the glove. (Seven and a half inches.) I measured the length of my arm – and here I made a mistake. I should have used the measurement from my hand all the way up to my elbow. The gloves would stay on a bit better if they were longer. Next time, I’d use about 12 inches, but instead I used 10. I also measured the distance around my forearm – which turned out to not work very well, as you’ll see later.

The neckline had a nice lace trim, so I decided to use that for the hand end of my glove. I marked out 7.5 inches, then 10 inches long (which should have been 12) and then the 9.5 inches for my forearm (which also turned out to be wrong – but worked anyway.)

At this point, I did a couple of things to get ready. First, I snipped the tag out of the back of the garment. I also took a small piece of the stretch lace and tested it out on my sewing machine. When sewing stretch lace with a regular sewing machine, I always use a zigzag stitch. This keeps the lace stretchy. But I wanted to test out sewing the lace – just so that I could be ready when I actually made the real gloves. You can see the test sample – looks okay to me!

The lacy trim means that I don’t need to worry about how to finish that end of the glove. But I wanted to make sure that the end of the glove at my elbow looked clean and finished. One nice thing about stretch lace is that it doesn’t unravel. So you can get away with leaving a LOT of the edges raw. I probably didn’t even really NEED to finish this edge – but I was afraid that the edge would curl up and start to roll down my arm. So I hemmed the elbow end – using a zigzag stitch.. You’ll notice that I didn’t turn the hem twice, just folded it over once – which works because the lace doesn’t unravel.

Now I have a square-ish piece of fabric with lace on one side, a hem on the opposite side, and two sides that are unfinished. Fold the fabric – right sides together, and start to mark out where your thumb will go. I decided to stitch (zigzag, always zigzag) about one inch from the end, then leave two inches open for my thumb, then stitch to my elbow. You can see how I’ve pinned the fabric into place for sewing with the white pins, and used the green pins to mark off the section I needed to leave unsewn.

And as you can see in the picture on the left, that really didn’t work much at all. But I could now see that I needed it to be a lot tighter at the wrist, and then just somewhat tighter up to my elbow. I just sewed another seam inside the first – as you can see in the middle picture – and it turned out great.

Two thoughts about this. First, when I make the next pair of gloves, I’ll probably do it EXACTLY the same way. Sew a seam that is too big, try them on, see where I need to tighten them up, and then sew another seam. After it’s been stitched once, you don’t need any pins to hold the fabric in line. You can just run it through the machine and voila! Also, it’s clear that the dimensions don’t need to be precise. Because the lace is stretchy, it’s forgiving.

I stressed a bit on how to finish the thumb hole. I hemmed it on the first glove (upper right in the pictures), but wasn’t very happy with the result. So I just left the second one as-is (lower left in the pictures). Because the fabric doesn’t unravel (love love love this stretch lace), you can leave it alone, or cut it back a bit, or whatever you like. Next time, I’ll probably not do anything else with the thumb hole. So the gloves are now done!

But wait! I have all this matching fabric leftover. So I decided to make a stretchy, wide belt and a scrunchie. More on that in the next blog post.

Lace 1980’s Accessories: The belt and scrunchie

In my last post, I made a pair of lace, fingerless gloves out of a lacy lingerie dress/nightgown thingie. With the extra fabric, I made a matching belt and scrunchie. Originally, I thought that I might sell these as a set in my Etsy store, but I’m not sure yet. Let me know what you think.

I didn’t get a good picture of the garment after I cut it up, but the biggest leftover was the section below the rather poorly drawn dotted line in the picture below.

Because the stretch lace doesn’t unravel, you could just leave the tube/belt as it is! If you need to make it smaller, just take in one of the side seams (like I did when the glove was too big.) So you can completely ignore the sewing part of this step if you want. I pinned the raw edges into a hem – as you can see in the picture above – and then stitched them together. So the belt is sort of like an inner tube, basically. When stitching stretchy fabric, I always use zigzag (because I don’t have one of them new-fangled serger machines). You can see the results below.

Now I have a nicely finished, double-thickness stretchy “belt.” But again, you could just wear it as-is and fold it over. No one will be the wiser.

Finally, I wanted a matching scrunchie. There are some very good scrunchie-making tutorials out there, but I’ll go ahead and show you how I made mine. It’s pretty obvious.

You start with a piece of fabric about 3.5 inches wide and about 14 inches long. I didn’t have a single piece of fabric left, so I stitched two together. With the right sides together, you sew along the long side (once again, always with the zigzag) – leaving several inches unsewn at each end. (I didn’t leave enough space, and so things were trickier later on.)

Next, you turn the tube inside out, pin the ends together, and sew them.

Take a strip of elastic – I used six inches and it seemed to work well – and threaded it through the tube. Then stitch the ends of the elastic together. If your elastic is more or less stretchy, you may need a different amount. I pinned the ends of my elastic together first and tried the scrunchie on before I sewed the ends together. And if you’ve never threaded elastic through a tube before, it’s easiest if you attach a safety pin to the end first, and work the safety pin through the tube.

I stitched the little gap in the seam closed, but since the stretch elastic doesn’t fray, and the fabric will be all scrunched together, you really don’t need to.

You can see the finished scrunchie – and the entire accessory set – below!

The Yip-yips – Construction

Honestly, I’m not sure that this is the absolute best way to make these costumes.  I struggled a bit with the exact mouth size and shape.  Because I used only materials that I found thrift / cheap, there were some work-arounds that I needed to do.  But they worked out fairly well.  At the very least, perhaps I will have ironed out a few details that could be helpful for you.

First, I laid out one of my blankets and folded it into quarters so that I could find the exact center of the blanket.  I put a safety pin in the very middle, so that I had a reference point.  Then I draped it over my head to see what the best orientation of the blanket might be.  Do I want the corners or the edges on the front, back and sides?  If the blanket isn’t quite square, I need to decide which way it hangs best.

Remember that when you close the mouth, you’ll be lifting up the front of the costume.  So make sure that you have enough fabric hanging in the front so that you’re still covered up when you close the mouth.  Since you haven’t cut the mouth yet, you won’t be able to see what it looks like. It’s helpful to have as assistant to “wear” the blanket while you figure out how it hangs down.   Mark key placed like where you want the crown of your head to be, and where the top of your upper lip will be.  Remember that you’ll need to see out through the mouth, so the mouth hole should start at about your eye brows.

I struggled with the size and shape of the mouth.  I ended up with one mouth being too big, and had to partially sew it closed, so better to go smaller rather than larger.   I’d suggest a hole about 15” x 15”.  Mark where you plan on putting the hole, then try the blanket on again and see what happens when you “close the mouth” to make sure you have enough fabric in the front that your waist doesn’t show when you lift up the fabric to shut the mouth.

Cut out the hole, and then cut a piece of your black fabric that is larger than the hole by at least a couple of inches on all sides.  No need to be super tidy or exact – just lay the fabric down, cover the hole with your black fabric, and cut it to be bigger.  I made the mouth hole oval – or in one case a slit – instead of round to accommodate the shape of the blanket.  I’m not 100% sure that was the right move, but I’m also not sure it was a mistake.  Like I said, I struggled a bit with the mouth shape.

Next, we’re pinning the fabric together to prepare for sewing.  Check which side of each fabric is the “top” and which is the underside.   Remember that you’ll want the right sides of the fabric to face each other.  Pin the black fabric to the hole at four corners – at 3, 6, 9 and 12 o’clock, basically.  This makes sure that the fabric is evenly distributed around the mouth.  Then, find the point half-way between the pins for the blanket and the black fabric and pin it there.  Then again half way between each of those pins.  Again, the idea is to make sure that the black fabric is fairly evenly distributed around the mouth.  It may gather up a bit – but that’s okay.  You can see in the picture how I’ve pinned it at the four corners, and then halfway between two pins, and so on.  Just keep pinning and measuring until you have the whole perimeter well pinned and the fabric fairly evenly distributed around the hole.

Then sew all around the mouth.  If possible, use big stitches so that you can rip it out if you’re not happy with it.  Because you’ll want to try to the costume on and make sure that you can see out of it, and that no one can see in.  Try this in bright light, in regular light, etc.  Take a flash photo with your phone and see if the face shows through.  Now is your chance to change or add to the mouth fabric, if necessary.

At this point, it became clear that my black fabric sort of bulged out of the mouth a bit.  So I put in another seam on the inside of the mouth so that I wouldn’t end up with black edges on the mouth.   This worked well for two of the three costumes.   On the third, it gave the costume “lips” so I ripped it out.  You’ll need to experiment a bit, depending on how your fabric hangs.

Once I got the mouth sewn, I put on the baseball cap.  I had already removed the bill, so it was a beanie, really.  Then I draped the blanket over it and shifted everything around until I got the mouth in the right position.  I pinned the hat into place, and then just tacked the blanket to the hat in three or four places by hand.  (If I had it to do again, I’d put the cap on backwards to start, or buy caps without logos.  When I went to stitch on the antennas, I had to stitch through the thick logo and it was a pain.)  Again, it helps to have a person model the costume so you can get everything positioned correctly.

Now, the only things left are the eyes, the antenna, and fixing up the sides somehow.

I just used a hot glue gun to secure the eyes, and cut pupils out of black electrical tape (so that I could change their size or position if necessary.)  For the antenna, I twisted three or four pipe cleaners together, leaving one end a bit splayed – like a chicken-foot  – so that I could easily anchor each chicken toe onto the costume.  This helped the antenna stand up.  I stitched through the blanket and sewed the pipe cleaner to the hat underneath so it was secure and would stand up.

The next step was having someone try the costumes on and adjusting the sides / length.  For two of the costumes, I cut the corners off the blankets so that I wouldn’t trip over them.  For the third, I used safety pins to tack the blanket edges together at the side of the costume so they wouldn’t gap.  I used safety pins because I was fearful that I would mis-sew the sides and the fabric would hang strangely.  Using pins let me adjust it later, as needed, and let the fabric hang better.

Finally, I concocted a way to hold the lower lip in position using something other than my fist.  There are many different ways to do this.  One yip-yip costume tutorial suggested holding a rounded sponge inside the costume to make the lower lip.  I rolled an old cloth placemat into a U shape and glued it to a paint stick.

I draped the lower lip over it, and held the stick in my hand.  Worked great.  The first and last pictures below show me just using my hand to hold the lip.  In the green costume, I was holding up the brim of a baseball hat – you can see how the jaw is smoother.  The jaw support thingie really smoothed out the look, and made the jaw easier to hold.

Overall, I’m very happy with them.  They were inexpensive and fairly easy to make.  And I got delighted response from people that I was looking for.

The Yip-yips – Materials

I was determined to make these costumes on the cheap – so that I could make a bunch of them if I wanted to.  The more yip-yips, the more impact the costume has, I think.  So here is my list of “ingredients” for them.

King-sized fleece blankets:  The fuzzier the better.  It is essential that they are king sized or you won’t have enough fabric.  Of course, you can also spend the money and buy fleece or fake fur.  The original yip-yips were red and blue, but I think any primary color would work.  I tried to avoid pastels – but if you were making a group costume, a few pastels thrown in would be fine.  Definitely avoid white, black, grey or beige.   You’re looking for muppety colors.

Black, see-though fabric that is not too see through:  This is tricky.  You need something that is sheer enough that you can see through it, but that is dark enough that people can’t see your face.  It’s the same principle that allows other people to look in your window at night, but makes it difficult to for you see outside.  I bought several dresses, skirts and sheer skirts and found only one that actually worked well.  The sheer robe in the picture below, for example, was too sheer and I needed to double up the fabric (after the fact) to make it work.  If necessary, you can use a double thickness of very sheer fabric, but you may find that when it drapes you get quadruple thickness, instead of just double, which would make it too opaque.  Before you actually sew it to anything, do some tests by draping it over your head while you’re wearing a hoodie.  If people can see your face at all through the fabric, the costume will be much less effective.

Eyeballs:  I found some hollow, white plastic “baseballs” at the dollar store (3 for $1) that worked quite well.   Once the pupils were on, you didn’t notice the texture of the balls at all.  And they were light weight.  Alternatively, you could use Styrofoam balls from the craft store.  I got a couple thrift, but from the craft store, I  bet they’d cost more than 33 cents apiece.  If the material is cheap enough, you can experiment a bit.

Pupils:  I cut circles out of black electrical tape, so that I could reposition them if needed.  I looked at a lot of other DIY yip-yip costumes online, and a common problem was pupils that were the wrong size or were misaligned.  I wanted to make sure that I could reposition mine, if necessary.

Antenna:  I bought packages of pipe cleaners at the dollar store.

Baseball hats:  One complaint that I read about some yip-yip costumes is that they crept around on your head as you were wearing them.  I also wanted a relatively firm foundation for the eyeballs and antenna.  So I bought some cheap baseball caps at the thrift shop and cut the bill off of them.  I think stocking caps would probably also work well.  Anything that will hold the costume on your head in a fixed position.

Jaw support:  The lower lip/jaw of the costume will just hang down if you don’t hold it up.  I was afraid that this would get tiring, so I made a simple U-shaped device out of an old placemat and glued it to a paint stirrer.  This allowed me to hold the lower lip in place in a more comfortable way.  See the yip-yip construction post for more details on this.

The Yip-yips

You remember the aliens from Sesame Street?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTc3PsW5ghQ

Some time ago, I saw a video of a handful of people, riding an elevator, all dressed as “yip-yips,” as the aliens are called.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtPkCF95Czo

I decided then that I would make some yip-yip costumes when I had the right excuse.   So here they are!

There are things that I love about these costumes, and things that I’m not fond of.  The two biggest issues with them both stem from the fact that they involve covering your face with fabric.  First, it can be hard to see out of them.  While I could make my way around the party, the venue was darkly lit and I had little or no peripheral vision.  So I stumbled into people a lot.  Also, it is almost impossible to eat or drink in them.

But they are a real blast to wear, and the response that we got from people was wonderful.  There is an interesting thing that happens sometimes when you dress like an iconic children’s character.   People subconsciously think “Hey!  I know that person!  I love that person!”  And they respond to you as if you are a old friend that they haven’t seen in a million years and are thrilled to have finally bumped into again.  They want to get their picture taken with you.  They tell you how much they loved you when they were a kid.  It’s amazing.   I had the same experience as Minnie Mouse, and a girl friend reported the same phenomenon when she was Glinda the Good Witch.  Everyone should have that experience at least once in their lives.

These costumes were fairly easy and in-expensive to make.  I’ve got information on the materials that I used and the costume construction in other blog posts.

Adventures in Curling Irons #3: The Wavy Thingie

I was narrowing in the look I wanted for my 1980s cruise hair.   Not muppety, not cute, but somewhere in between.

I found this thing at a thrift shop and thought it might give me softer waves than the crimper, but not true curls, like the curling iron.   So I sanitized it.  About four times.  And gave it a whirl.

I ended up getting just what I was looking for.  Waves – not curls.   The first picture shows my hair before I brushed it out.  Then the next one shows what it looked like after a light brushing.

This was really exactly what I was looking for.  Soft curls that I could scrunch up (with a ton of hair spray, dry shampoo, mousse and so forth) to try to get that “big 1980’s hair” look.

Adventures in Curling Irons #2: The Small Barrel Curling Iron

I was trying to put together a 1980’s hair “look” for my 1980’s cruise.   Realizing that the crimper made me look like a muppet, I thought I’d try something that put more of a wave and less of a kink into my hair.   So I bought a curling iron.

I feel like I got MUCH better results.  But I’d only managed to look sort of normal.  (Actually, kinda cute, I think.)   Not that “big hair” look that I was going for.

Adventures in Curling Irons #1: The Crimper

When I went on the 1980s cruise, I spent some time experimenting with different curling irons and thought that I should save the results here – for posterity.   It should be noted that I am horrible with “doing my hair” to the point that I usually dry my hair by just pointing the heating vents of my car at my head while I’m on the way to work.

The first tool I tried was a crimper.

 

Unfortunately, it made me look like a muppet.

It looked a bit better when I brushed all my hair to the side.  There is definitely a 1980’s look starting to form with the side-swept hair.  But not what I was looking for.

The Wonder of Mod Podge

I had a vintage, pale, lemon yellow dress, and I wanted shoes and a purse to match.  I was sure that this was an impossible wish – until I learned about Mod Podge.

I went to the thrift shop and bought a yellow golf shirt – just a regular, men’s golf shirt – that was almost exactly the same color as the dress.   I also bought a pair of beige, leather shoes with an appropriate heel, and a white leather purse with a vintage-looking clasp.

First, I scuffed the leather with a bit of sand paper to help everything adhere, and then I painted a coating of Mod Podge (glossy, general purpose) over the entire accessory and let it dry.   Next, I very roughly cut the fabric to shape – but oversized for some margin.   I didn’t think I’d be able to easily predict how this whole project would go, and I was right.  The margin was important.

I put an even, and thorough, but not too thick, coat of Mod Podge over the leather and then just pressed the fabric against it, smoothing out any wrinkles as I went along.   I put too thick a coat on the shoes, so they have some smudges and smears on them.   And I missed a spot on the purse, so there is a little place where the fabric can shift about instead of actually being stuck to the purse.   Oh well.

Next, I cut the fabric as much to shape as I could – sometime using scissors, sometimes an exacto knife.   Finally, I painted a little bit more Mod Podge onto the edges and pressed the very edges of the fabric against it.

They turned out great!   It was my first attempt, so in some places, I over cut the fabric and the leather shows around the edges – but I got the affect that I wanted.   My dress, shoes and handbag all matched.