Hot Rod Halloween

thanks to Russ & Jen for capturing this moment

This year I put in more effort in the creation of my Halloween costume than in any year before. The biggest difference had to do with the fact that I literally had to de- and then reconstruct my costume from the ground up. It was a daunting task but I really feel the end result was worth all the pain and suffering. You may remember this image that I posted a few weeks back showing the base of my costume in its original state.

I have to start by giving love to The Lonely Island Fan for his AMAZING step by step how-to that he posted last year for the creation of his own Hot Rod costume. He put a ton of effort into the detail of his, making it a spot on replica of the suit used in the film. Mine is close to the original but time constraints and plain old laziness left me with a slightly less than perfect carbon copy. I can live with that.

To start, the navy blue piping had to be removed from around the waistband of the original suit and transferred to the sleeve cuffs.

I purchased both patches online through separate vendors as the “Tony’s Auto” patch had to be special ordered through a company called Stitch-A-Logo. I recommend them highly, as the first patch they sent me was defective and they had a replacement patch out to me within 2 business days at no additional cost.

Next, came one of the hardest areas of the costume to complete and that may have been partly due to my own poor planning. The piping on the sides of the legs and sleeves required that I rip the seams out of the under arm and inner thigh areas of the entire suit in order to use a machine to sew the stripes down. Initially I’m thinking: Kill me now. In reality it was well worth all the extra effort as it allowed me to trim away some of the unnecessary cloth in those areas for a better fit.

The star was easier than I thought it would be as The Bee printed me out a star the size that I would need for the suit and I just traced that onto the fabric. Because stars are hard to draw freehand, ya’ll. Once the star was traced I took to the machine and sewed the layers together. I used about 4 layers of a basic (non stretchy <—- I cannot emphasize that enough) white cotton fabric, which I sewed together for greater ease when sewing the star onto the suit itself.

Tackling the cape was a tough and tricky task but without which I would say all of NO ONE would have known who the hell I was. I made the mistake of buying a stretchy t-shirt material fabric for the red lettering which spelled out ROD and basically had to scrap my initial attempt and recreate the letters with left over material from the red arm piping. The stretch material created too much pull and my machine skills being less than professional, made for a lumpy overlapped mess. Then I cut button holes in the top of the cape and sewed buttons just underneath the collar of the suit for easy on/off capability. Get it? Capeability. Yeah, I went there.

The final touch were the white stars which I created by using a stamper sponge that I bought in an inexpensive package of miscellaneous brushes from AC Moore. I had to cut the star out of the sponge with an Exact-o knife and it came out surprisingly well, all things considered. I used some screen printing fabric ink and stamped stars down the red and blue piping as well as a few on the chest and front and back of the upper sleeve.

The Bee went as a Ghostbuster and made this awesome ghost trap as an accessory to his costume. From scratch! This thing was a pile of cardboard, bottle caps and batteries before he gave it the magic touch.

I was also super impressed by these bloody finger cookies that a friend’s mom made for our party.

How cool and CREEPY are they?

Have I mentioned that Halloween is one of my favorite holidays? Because it SO is.

Can’t wait until next year!!!