Backtrack: Beat’s beanie and bracelet

I actually plan on re-making almost every piece of Beat’s costume, but there are two that I am going to keep. One is his beanie, and the other is his bracelet.

If I had more time, I would have made the beanie ribbed, but I’m also okay with how it looks now. It was made with some cotton interlock:

beat_beanie_01

I basically made 2 shapes like that and sewed them together. The skull was cut out of some left over fleece I had. First, I cut out a rectangular piece and ironed it onto some Heat n Bond. Then, I drew the design on the back part, cut it out, and ironed it onto the beanie. Here is the back side of the skull which was peeled off. It shows my pencil markings when making the design:

beat_beanie_02

The bracelet was first made with some stretch cotton, since I actually didn’t have Jack’s wrist measurements. I ordered two one-row pyramid stud bracelets from Hot Topic (which they don’t seem to carry on their site anymore), and partially glued them onto the black fabric base using hot glue:

beat_bracelet_01

This lets the bottom part stretch as needed, and lets you adjust where you want to button the top 2 pyramid stud bracelets.

beat_bracelet_02

Including shipping, the two pyramid stud bracelets came out to $22.17. The black stretch cotton was $7.99/yd, on sale for $7.19. Beat’s total is now $36.55.

Completion!

neku_beat_01

Both Neku and Beat costumes are finished! That is a picture of us at A-kon. I haven’t been blogging about my step-by-step progress lately because I was in a rush and was working on the costumes non-stop last week. I finished Thursday night, since I left for Dallas on Friday.

I’ll go back and write about parts of the costume later.

Coming together

I feel like the major components of the costume are finally coming together. The shirt is now completely done.

neku_shirt_03

The collar is like a turtleneck, except it folds inwards. This let’s me adjust the height of the collar if needed. I thought I would need interfacing to keep it up, but I didn’t use any. It seems to stay up on its own.

I’ve also been struggling with styling the wig. I used the Punky from Cosworx. Here is how it came (ignore the clips I put in).

neku_wig_01

Here it is now, partially done.

neku_wig_02

My main problems is that the front is very fluffy and full, making the front and sides puff out more than I want. The back, on the other hand, is very thin. I’m having a hard time keeping the spikes up since there isn’t enough hair, and the netting is also starting to show. Much work still needs to be done on it!

Things left to do for Neku:
– Finish styling the wig
– Make shoe covers
– Make headphones
– Make his MP3 player