Toy Story Costumes cont: Jessie Chaps & Woody Vest

Supplies:
White Vinyl
Black Felt
Black Piping
Fabric glue - I used Fabri-Tac by Beacon
Sewing stuff.
Jeans you don't want (or that have huge holes in the knees even though they are really nice jeans)

I wanted to use a really heavy fabric for the chaps and vest so they would hang like real leather. luckily the craft store had two large fabric remnants of white vinyl. Nice.

I searched the Internet for Jessie pics and Jessie costumes to find ones that were close to the character. I used this inspiration pic to get a feel for what the chaps should look like>>

Then I just started cutting. I pinned one chap to the pair of pants I was going to donate to this costume, refined the shape a little more, and then cut another one for the other leg.
It is very helpful to have a toddler help you practice being "scary" while you ponder upon the shape of the chaps.
Then using tracing paper, or tissue paper, I cut out some cow print spots that resembled the cow spots on the actual Jessie character's pants.

You can guess the next part. Cut, place, glue.
Finally I sewed the black pipping around the outside edge, and added a few white frills off either chap.

Then, well, this is the part I hadn't thought of till it was upon me. I had to hand sew each chap onto my jeans. I don't know what else I was thinking, but I really thought this step would be easier. It wasn't bad, I'm just not very talented at sewing so it was slow.

Buuut:

wala! Jessie cow chaps!

Honestly the vest is exactly the same process just no black piping.

Using a vest we already had, I just traced the outlines onto the vinyl, cut it out, and sewed the ends together. Poof. Vest!

 Then again with the analyzing Woody's cow print on his vest and making my own similar cow prints.

Lots of glue later...

OH yea. I added a Styrofoam ring and some rope on a safety pin to make pull strings for us both.

How to Trick out Your BUZZ Light year Costume

We can't do things normally in my house. I'm very sorry. With an artist and an engineer everything is a problem to solve an every problem must not have a mundane answer. SO. Brian suggested Toy Story for our costumes this year. I suggested we be Woody and Jessie. Brian suggest Brad be Buzz. Then Brian suggested we add LEDs to Brad's costume... THEN he suggested that the LEDs blink.
So yea.

Step 1. Find a cheap, slightly large, Buzz Light year pj outfit.
We found ours at a consignment sale. It is a 4T, and our little guy is 24 months, but it still worked out.

Step 2. Brighten it up.
I used a regular BLACK fabric marker to darken the lines and the black areas to make it look new. It worked!

 

 

 

Step 3. Using the thickest Pellon fusible fabric backing you can find, create a pocket. Following the basic shape of the green area, make a vest shape. Fold the pellon in half so you have two attached mirror vests that you can fold up to make a pocket. I cut the side facing the body so it would be easier to get into... but I don't suggest this. It made his costume pooch. I do suggest ironing on a soft fabric on the outside iron on surface. (If you make it you know what I'm talking about.)

Step 4. Turn it over to you engineer for a few weeks so he can figure out the light thing he wants to do, and actually have time to do it. My engineer decided to have FLASHING red and green LEDs. This was more complicated of course, and required several trips to RadioShack and another to Frys. But it is so cool, it was worth it! Since Brian wanted the LEDs to blink it required a circuit board which in turn required some sort of protective plastic enclosure. If the lights were just to stay on you do not need a circuit board.(WHICH IS SO MUCH SIMPLER AND LESS BULKY)

Step 5. Plan where LED will go and punch little holes through the outside facing part of the pocket. I found it best to punch from the front to the back. I used the smallest size hole punch for our small LEDs.

Step 6. Tape ALL the wires down (we used fabric tape it worked REALLY well). Ours has a black enclosure box to hold the circuit board, and a wire for the battery.

 Inside out:

 Right side out!

Ready for the big reveal!!

Brad wore his cost ume the whole night! He even wore the wings for most of the night too! (Attached with velcro and made with that craft foam stuff glued together. We can discuss the horrors of gluing that stuff together another day.)

You can see some of his little LEDs glowing in this pic! Yea we put LEDs in the wings too. So cute!