Monday, October 22, 2012

Link's Hero's Tunic

Halloween is rolling through again. In our house it is your right to choose and be granted any costume that you wish. Luckily for me, Teddy chose a simple classic, and it came together in no time!
I used the Burda 9510 pattern for the tunic and it was as easy as can be. I'm loving the realistic look that resulted from using green linen instead of the Halloween staple polar fleece! I winged the hat with the left over fabric by measuring the circumference of Ted's head and dividing that in half. Then cutting out a long triangle on the fold.
A quick trip to the basement yielded a pair of my daughter's outgrown brown boots. I thought about adding a folded cuff and buckle for authenticity, but my faux leather did not match the boot leather at all. The boots look great as is and really make the outfit.
I simply painted over my the Nerf shield that my son already had with Martha Stewart craft paints. Wow, I really love those! They have worked perfectly for all kinds of uses! I just eyeballed it from a picture online and tried to use the features of the Nerf shield where I could. Not a perfect match.... but good enough for Teddy. The sword is also a Nerf sword.
And to top the outfit off and really sell it, I made a bunch of pleather accessories. Because pleather is basically a knit fabric coated by plastic, I made sure to stabilize it. For the belt, I sewed it to webbing. For the shield/sword/quiver belt, I simply sewed it to some wide ribbon that I had on hand. I just picked up a few buckles and eyeballed it. I did pick up another pattern to make the little pouch and gauntlets. I used my trusty Crop-O-Dile to punch holes in the belts as well as to add gromets to the gauntlets. I picked up some leather lace to finish that project off.
A couple of accessories go a long way in selling the outfit and making a little kid blissfully happy. I picked up a couple of these little bottles with cork tops from Hobby Lobby. The one pictured was empty; but we filled the other one with the juice from a glow stick! It looks really great as a potion. I also added a wooden sling-shot that can be tucked in the belt.

The under layer was purchased from Walmart. It is simply a cream thermal tee-shirt and some thick cream tights. If you are making this outfit for a uber-fan, you might want to pick up at least two pairs of tights and maybe an extra under shirt. Teddy lives in this outfit and the 1st set of tights are stained like crazy!


Happy Halloween!!