Halloween a week ago

The actual trick or treating was, for me, anticlimactic after the production of two Jawa costumes. The dual production of two Jawa costumes because I was so dissatisfied with my first attempt. The second attempt commenced Saturday morning after I jogged 8.5 miles, ate The Hungry Jill at Alice's Restaurant, and visited St. Vinnie's, where I found a beige full-size flannel sheet with two pillowcases. Bought a second bottle of Rit Dark Brown at JoAnn's, and dyed that flannel before the second attempt at costume design began.

On Sunday, after jogging 9.5 miles and attending church services, DH and Jack went up the mountain to view some fall colors and I set myself to remaking those Jawa costumes. Due to the smaller size of the fabric I had to revamp the design entirely but in the end I was much happier with the results. The color and the fit are better. In making the costumes I learned that sewing is way more about preparation than about running the machine.



I made the gunbelts from a remnant of tan vinyl from JoAnn. I rubbed it with black StayzOn ink and spent a lot of time zig-zagging edges and constructing pockets. Making something completely from my own vision was a lot of fun and fueled my creative confidence.



To make the masks I covered standard decorator's white plastic face masks with black velour fabric (found that Elmer's white did the job better than anything else). At Saver's I found two short strings of Christmas lights that operated on battery packs (2 c-cells each). From my own Christmas lights I pillaged amber bulbs which were just the right color and just the right size. Poked those through the velour just below the eye holes in the mask... in the dark they were perfect but the boys refused to wear them because it was still practically 90 degrees outside and it was hot under the hoods.



DH made the blasters by jigsawing the stock from a sheet of plywood then sanding and staining it. The barrels he made from two different sizes of PVC pipe and a shower flange (or something like it) all glued together and painted with a black rubberized spraypaint. The blasters didn't survive being dropped when the boys fell face forward after tripping over the frayed edges of their appropriately-colored but maybe a bit too long robes, but they looked awful danged cool for the first 20 minutes.