When Ryan mentioned that I reminded him a little bit of Gadget Hackwrench, from Chip N’ Dale’s Rescue Rangers I knew it would have to be my next costume. A great show from my childhood, plus a fun, smart female engineer? It’s perfect!
I got distracted and didn’t take very many pictures of the process, so this will be a description heavy post, my apologies.
The first step was to make the ears. I wanted them to stand up, and also be bendable but hold their shape. To do this purchased some crochet mats and some mid gauge wire. I cut the shape of the ears, attached the wire to the mats by sewing around the wire through the holes in the crochet mat.
Next I made the outside of the ears out of felt, using a pink felt for one side and a light brown felt for the other. I traced the outline of the inner piece onto the felt, pinned the two pieces together, and cut just outside of the line.
With the pieces still pinned together I sewed along the traced line, along the sides and top, but not the bottom. You need to leave that open to turn it inside out. Turn the ear inside out, fold the inner piece and slide it up into the ear. Then you need to slip stitch closed the bottom. Although using a perfect slip stitch isn’t that important, since nobody really sees the bottom of the ear once it’s on your head, so close it however you like.
Finally, attach the ears to a headband of some sort. I used a combination of hot glue and a staple gun.
Next I got a pair of super cheap welding goggles from Amazon. It was actually listed in the description that they were great for steampunk cosplay, ha, I don’t think too many people were buying these for actually welding, they were so cheap I would not trust my eyes to them. I spray painted them dark blue like Gadget’s, and added a black elastic strap.
Alright, that’s the end of the in-progress photos for Gadget, sorry. I got a pattern for a 70s eara jumpsuit off eBay for $2.50, but then I decided to just purchase some cheap $15 coveralls from Amazon an dye them violet. I tailored it a little bit, as it was fairly baggy, and then sewed on a tail, which was just a tapered tube of brown felt filled with stuffing. I made a belt out of some purple stretchy fabric I had left over from something else. I just made a basic tube a few inches longer than the circumference of my waist, hemmed the ends, and then put a strip of velcro on each end.
I also made an over-sized wrench out of cardboard. I drew the shape of my wrench onto a piece of cardboard and cut it out three times. On two of the pieces I cut out some teardrop shaped holes in the handle portion. This would give the wrench some 3-dimensional shape. I also cut a whole in each piece where the winder would be, and made a winder out of a toilet paper tube wrapped with thick thread. I glued the whole thing together and gave it a metallic look using the same technique as in my Yuffie post (spray painting silver and then brushing in different colours for texture.)
I originally made this costume for Halloween, but I also whipped up a quick Monterey Jack costume for Ryan for us to take to DragonCon. It was just a simple aviator cap and ears made in similar fashion. We bought a cheap mustache online and he had a bomber jacket to wear already.
Thanks to David Ngo who snapped a great photo of us at DragonCon.
