Homemade Lycan costume…

 Well as most of you have already seen via Facebook, Steph and Aldo were characters from the movie “Underworld”, Selene and her captured Lycan to be exact. What do you think? A pretty close likeness eh? I was impressed with Steph’s costume but they were struggling coming up with Aldo’s part of the duo when she came to me for help. “Will you help me make Aldo a Lycan costume? Puh-leeease?? I need ideas. I want it to be awesome!” Well since being the most awesome sister in the whole wide world is my specialty, I obliged .

**Warning. I fully intend to toot my own horn in the following paragraphs**

I scoured the internet for tutorials on how to make a muscle suit but couldn’t find anything. Grrr. Then I downed some coffee, (aka my crack) and got to work brainstorming ideas. You want to know my secret?? I used one of Aaron’s t-shirts and cut it up to use as the base for the suit and sewed the black fleece on top of it making sure to use slightly bigger pieces of the fleece in order to create pockets to stuff. Then I just re-sewed the shirt back together using the same seams and voila! Muscles! That’s it. I googled body builder images to see the defined muscles more clearly in order to make it look as life-like as possible.

The costume is 2 pieces, the chest/arms and the legs (I used the same method as the chest/arms by cutting up a pair of Aaron’s knit pants and using them as the pattern pieces. Thanks Honey!!) Here’s a pic mid construction with Steph modeling it for me:

Front view

Back view.

This really was a great first time muscle making project for 2 reasons, 1.) I used black fleece which is very forgiving and hides a multitude of sins (versus using spandex or lycra, gosh that would have been a nightmare!), and 2.) We were adding fur in random places so that also added extra coverage for any imperfections .

I seriously couldn’t believe the amazing luck we had with it all working out the very first take. There was no trial run or major calculations/measurement mistakes or anything! This was it!

As for the feet, Aldo’s close buddy made him stilts to walk on using wood which made him go from 5’8 to 6’5! (Funny story, when we walked into the Halloween party, everyone was in awe of his costume and as Aldo was walking by, one guy said to another, “wow, and that dude has the perfect height for that costume!”) Ha ha ha. Made my night. Illusion complete. The only thing we didn’t make was the mask, and hands (I’m not that ambitious!)

This is no doubt my proudest sewing creation . For those of you who are not on Facebook, ahem JACI, tomorrow I’ll show you the costume I made for me, followed by my son’s.

Until then, buenas noches mis amigos!

-Linds