Gloves and Trousers (Posted 25th January 2010)

Gloves
For the gloves I used some black pleather that I had left over from my Lu Bu costume. This is about the fourth pair of gloves I have made for my various costumes and I would like to recommend the website sew-ing.com for a really simple and nifty glove pattern which is to be found at http://sew-ing.com/make/gloves.html
I am lucky as the pattern when printed off onto A4 fits my hands perfectly but I am sure that anyone could easily shrink or enlarge the basic pattern to suit themselves. The actual pattern is clearly marked and although the instructions at first glance might look a little daunting once you start to follow them it is a pretty simple process. I adapted the basic pattern to make fingerless gloves and it would be easy enough to adapt it to make long evening style gloves too. I won’t go into details as regards to using the pattern as that is all explained on the print out but I have taken a few photographs of my gloves as I made them which might help illuminate the progress for anyone interested in how I made them when I add them to my website. All I have to do now to finish the gloves is add the gold detail on the back of the hand once I have retrieved my glue gun.
Trousers
For the trousers I used an old pair of pyjamas as a pattern and white cotton fabric that I had left over from a previous costume. I ironed the fabric, pinned the pyjamas to it and finally cut out the pieces. I tacked all the pieces together and then machine stitched it to ensure strong seams. I always try to machine stitch any seams that I know might have stress upon them as these are usually the seams that would be the most embarrassing or annoying if them became unstitched. Also as I am expecting there will be quite a bit of hand sewing later in the costume I wanted to speed up the progress by using a sewing machine where ever possible. Once I had sewn the trousers together I added a length of elastic at the top of the waist and then dyed the trousers black with a pack of Dylon that I had left over from the Lu Bu costume.
Once the trousers were dyed, dried and iron I started to add the red details. At the time the fabric shop was closed due to snow and as I am on a more limited budget due to moving out I decided to make the tape myself. I used scraps of the same white cotton fabric which I made the trousers from to make the edging. I cut two strips twice the final desired width and then ironed it. Next I folded one of the raw length edges into the middle of the strip, ironed it flat and then repeated the process with the other raw length edge. I then turned the strip over and pressed the whole thing flat. I made two strips of about half an inch to detail the bottom of the trousers and four strips if about an inch to detail the front of each leg of the trousers.
I put the trousers on and then using a length of cord to loosely tie the legs of the trousers so I could pin the point where the top of the triangle shaped split would be when worn. Taking the trousers off I cut a triangle from newspaper and placed it (top point at the pin) on each leg and drew around it. I cut out each triangle and then sewed by hand a small hem all the way around the raw edge of the bottom hem of each trouser leg to neat it. Then I hand sewed the strips around the bottom hem of the trouser legs, I started at the top point of the triangle and then worked my way around the hem sewing one side at a time until the two strips met at the back. Finally I hand stitched two stripes to the front of each trouser leg and then coloured all the strips with red Dylon fabric paint.
I have cut two half inch strips of white cotton which I will colour with red fabric paint and use as ties for each of the trouser legs. I am probably going to use lengths of elastic whether sew into the leg or wrapped around the leg to bunch up the fabric and the tie the strips around the leg.