Lizard costume!

Its still a work in progress, but at least it has spikes now! (**Here’s a post with a photo of the finished costume**)

spikes!

materials

For some reason I decided to be a lizard for halloween this year. When looking for ideas, I saw this great lizard costume on flickr- its super cute and I figured I could definitely make something like it. First, for the fabric… I tried ordering some stretch jersey fabric online, but it didn’t really work out. The green was way too bright, thin and spandexey. The yellow was dull and fuzzy… not quite what I wanted, but at least workable. Last year I bought a green dress from American Apparel for my Jean Grey costume, and realized it would be perfect to alter to the lizard. And this year, it was on sale! I got two, one for the main body, the other to make a hood and tail. A trip to Jomar (very strange store, I like it!) and I got green and yellow thread, as well as a whole bunch of shoulder pads for the spikes.

I wanted to make a tutorial about making it, but I really only photographed the spike part. The hood was rather complicated, and I was too wrapped up in figuring it out to take any good shots. A bit of a how-to for the spikes after the jump…

laying out the spikes

First I wanted to figure out how many spikes to make… I cut the shoulder pads in half, and then a little smaller, based on what looked best. Originally I thought I was going to make a tail, so I made a few too many spikes, but better that then too few, I think.

pile of spikes

I cut the fabric into rectangles, and laid out the pads so I only had to sew down the curve. I left the cut side long so it could be a base for sewing onto the dress. My biggest fear was that the spikes would flop around and look ridiculous. I might look ridiculous in the costume, but it won’t be because of that. :-)

fabric folded under

I folded the long part under like wrapping a present… my goal was to keep the base a regularly shaped size, but I ended up getting a little sloppy about that. I sewed the rectangles down before placing them on the dress.

sewing a spike (bright color!)

Sewing onto the dress was a bit tough, because my machine only has a straight (forward) stitch. If I had a more modern sewing machine, I think I would have used a zig-zag stitch for most of this project… but the singer did well anyway.

As far as the hood- I started out with a sweatshirt that fit nicely, and traced out the hood. However, the dress had a v-neck in the front and back, so I had to figure out how to adjust the hood appropriately. I didn’t have too much fabric to mess with, so I used some of the original bright green to make a mock hood. The join to the dress is a little awkward, but I covered it with a spike.

All in all, its not the neatest sewn project, but I like it! I think I will add some spots or something to the front to make it more lizard and less dragon, but that can happen another day.