{Costumes} Book Week: Toothless and Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III

Book Week = costume making! Whoop whoop! Before you read on, I have to explain that I love dress ups. Any excuse. I also love making different things, the same old thing on the production lines drives me a bit nuts. So when one kid says he wants to go as Toothless, I say cool. Lets do it! An opportunity to make and dress my kids in weird and wonderful things will never get past me. And if I can visualise the making process, I go all out. I also put things of til the last minute. Like the very last minute. So we (I actually) did have a couple of late nights.

I'm going to blog this quickly now, before I get all critical about how imperfect these costumes are... in advance, sorry for the photo overload.

Mr K wanted to go as "Toothless", the dragon from How to Train Your Dragon. Never mind that the dragon in the book is a different breed to the one in the movie. We did the movie-style dragon. I got a bit in trouble because the teeth didn't go all the way around the hood. [ insert smiley grimace(mine)...fine wear your sports clothes then]. I pondered over the wings for way too long, Mr Toffee Tree suggested reticulation pipe which would have worked perfectly is it wasn't quite so curly! Maybe in a few weeks it will become more wing shaped?!

Mr N didn't have kindy today, but he wanted to be Hiccup (from How to Train Your Dragon 2, because don't you know, he has a totally different outfit from the first movie) and walk in the parade with his brother. His lovely teacher let him join in. I taped silver duct tape on his sock-covered-boot to mimic Hiccup's prosthetic lower leg, but didn't get a pic of that one as I did it in the car on the way to school! 

P.S. I'm learning (slowly) how to use a new lens and I just couldn't figure out the light this morning in some of the shots!


ADDIT:
The HOW TO on HICCUP

I basically made a simple long sleeve t-shirt Recess Raglan T (from See Kate Sew/pattern anthology), the pants were a simplified version of Coastal Cargos by Blank Slate, I just added the brown strips down the outer leg before I sewed each leg together. The leg cuff/horizontal ties are brown strips with a bit of elastic to hold them on the outside of the pants.

The rest I really winged it by looking at pictures from the movie... the brown vest I put a whole lot of effort into 'quilting' in a diagonal cross-hatch and really shouldn't have bothered because you can hardly see it. I did cut a basic pattern from tracing vilene to check the size/shape before I cut the actual fabric.  It is lined, but not interlined with anything. The strings pass through small buttonholes.

The black vest was made from polar fleece - I cut around a t-shirt that fit Nath, about half the length of the tshirt.  The back was in one piece on the fold, but for the front, one side was longer to cross over the chest (Right should be longer). Because I cut the wrong side to overlap...doh!...I flipped it inside out. Polar fleece - no worries! Bit picky probably but I'm sure every 4-6yo boy (and every boy beyond) would look at it and say it was around the wrong way! I added a 'grandfather' style collar to it, which don't ask me why, I lined with a random fabric (so I really should have made it plain old black). Plus I cut strips, stitched into a flat tube for the crossover strap, then sewed down at each end and attached together with a belt loop thingo. The other short strappy bits I simply stitched straight on and added some little silver pyramid claw embellishments. The red button. Makes me smile. I made that button about 15 years ago (perhaps longer!), along with a few in other colours. Not sure what for, but now one has been used!!

The black waist belt was a length of polar fleece, folded in half and sewn together, turned right side out. Held together (unsuccessfully) with a single silver pyramid claw clasp. A little longer with a knot would had done the trick!

For the arm guards - I cut a black oval for each arm plus a brown rectangular-ish shape - oval at the top, flat at the bottom, slightly longer than the black oval. The red ensign on the Right arm was also polar fleece sewn straight on to the black piece, before it was stitched to the brown underneath. I tacked this onto the green sleeve on each vertical side. If your green shirt isn't stretchy, probably do this first, before you make the shirt. Mine was jersey stretch so it wasn't a problem to do it afterwards.

The forearm cuffs are tubes of black polar fleece. I added the brown shield pieces and the semi-circle hand covers before I stitched the tube together.The stretch of the polar fleece held these up OK for a little while, but could have done with some elastic up the top near the elbow, to hold them up a bit better.

The boys pointed out to me last week, when the costumes made a re-appearance, that the forearms were missing a whole stack of black straps. Oh...well...um...

A recap - Hiccup is made up of...
Green jersey stretch raglan tee
Green velveteen (non-stretch) coastal cargo pants with brown strip, brown thigh strips
Long brown vest with string ties
Cropped black polar fleece
Arm guards- black oval, brown rectangle
Forearm guards - black tube, brown rectangle, brown semi-circle
 Black waist belt.
Gumboots covered with Dad's black socks, one embellished with silver duct tape for the prosthetic leg.

Finding anything?

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it."

👑 A