Hero's Finish

Another effort was made to work on Nathan's game/con costume. He needed an over-vest in primary yellow. I envisioned using a light weight canvas; and so the hunt began. We went to Wal-mart and the only fabric they had in primary yellow was polar fleece. Ummm... I don't think so. Then we went to Beverly Fabrics. They had Palencia, but it wasn't thick enough. No twills, no khakis, no colored denim... nada. What's with this town?

We found 60" wide Duck cloth in natural. At least they had something close to lightweight canvas. I asked the clerk if she thought it would take dye well. "It's 100% cotton, sure." So we decided to dye the Duck cloth primary yellow. Seems like a good duck color to me. =)

Next we went to three stores to find enough yellow dye. It seems all the craft stores think anyone's dyeing these days is tee shirts in the tie dye mode. Dyeing is done by the weight of the cloth and that meant more than just one little packet of dye powder. We got home, prewashed the yardage, dissolved the dyes in the washer and set the clock for an hour.

Not to bad considering we started with natural, not white.

The vest needed to come below his knees so we added ten inches to the suggested length of the pattern and laid it out. I got to use three yards of stash muslin for the lining!

We started mid-morning, broke for lunch at 12:30 and 2:15 - Nathan and I being on different schedules. We sewed in tandem, we took turns using his machine. We took a break in the afternoon. At 3:15 I said, "We'll probably finish by 4 o'clock." He gave me a dubious look. It takes longer to teach someone how to pin right sides together, sew, trim, clip the curves, turn, press and top stitch then it does to just do it. Lots of sharing going on too. It was neat. It was 3:55 when he dressed and pulled on his boots.

"What's this character's name?" "Hero." "Oh..." "From DragonQuest 8." "Okay."

Hero's finish.