Hey everyone I recently needed to make a Luke Skywalker costume for my son to
wear in my How to Make a Luke Skywalker Flight Helmet video tutorial so I
thought I'd share with you what I used and how I did it. Let's check it out.
I found a couple Taekwondo uniforms at the thrift store which I used for the
pants and top. Everything would have been a lot easier if I had found a karate top
but you get what you get and you don't get upset when you're shopping at the
thrift store. The first thing I needed to do was get rid of the fancy logo and
badge on the front of the uniform. I'm pretty sure this was the most
time-consuming part of the entire project because it's just really hard to
unstitch all that crazy embroidery. The next thing I did is I dyed the pants
brown in a big vat of tea. You can see exactly how I did that by watching my
tea pants dyeing video. Now if you needed your costume in a hurry you could kind
of just stop right here and call it pretty much good however I did not stop
here because I wanted to get it a little bit more accurate. What I wanted was for
one lapel to overlap the other and close up the gap at the neck so I took all my
fancy sewing supplies into my secret lair and went to work. I cut the front of
the shirt open following the angle made by the line of the top lapel. I wanted
the edging of the lapel to continue all the way down the front angle so I cut a
strip of fabric from my second Taekwondo uniform to create that edging. I hemmed
the strip on both sides and then sewed that strip around the cut edge of the
shirt. I wasn't super keen on how it looked where my fancy new strip
overlapped the old one but I didn't really want to take the time to make one
strip to go around the whole lapel. I then sewed another piece of my donor
uniform to the other cut side, which gave me this. I folded the extra material
under, following the line of the lapel, and sewed it down. This piece won't
really be seen because it's going to be overlapped by the other lapel but we
still need it to keep the shirt from falling off. A few quick stitches to sew
up the seams on the side of the shirt and cut off and hem any of that extra
piece that might be peeking out the bottom and the top is finished.
Taekwondo pants are quite a bit baggier than the skinny jeans Luke prefers so I
took some pins and marked down one side where I thought the seams should go to
skinny them up. Just be careful not to pin your children to the pants. I
turned the pants inside out and used a ruler to transfer the marks from one
pant leg to the other so they would both be the same then it was a simple matter
of sewing a seam straight up that line. Boom. Skinny pants. Next I grabbed a
random piece of fabric in slow motion for the strips of cloth that wrap around
Luke's lower legs. I made a mark every three inches and cut it into as long
of strips as possible. It turned out as long as possible wasn't long enough so I
had to sew two together for each strip which gave me a strip that was 310
centimeters long. The perfect size for dancing.
After my heartfelt dance break I found some boots at the thrift store that were
basically the right style with the wrong color. They were a bit tall so I chopped
them down. Twice. I then pulled out my acrylic paints and tried to find a color
that would match my leg wrap around strip things. After a bit of trial and
error I ended up using Deco Art Americana Premium Titanium White and Raw
Sienna. These paints were provided to me by Deco Art through their helping
artists program. Of course it's always a good idea to try your paint out on some
scrap before applying it to your actual project. I wanted my boots to look kind
of old and worn so I didn't want a totally even color on them. So instead of
mixing my paints to a uniform color before painting I took a bit of each
color on my paintbrush and more or less mixed it on the boot as I went. Now
painting on boots isn't exactly what acrylic artist paints are made for so
you're gonna end up with a boot that's a bit stiff but in a pinch they sure do
the job. I definitely needed more than one coat because the first coat soaked
into the material pretty good and because I don't have a lot of patience I
used my blow dryer to speed up the dry time. Once the fabric had been sealed by
that first coat of paint the second coat went on with a much denser color. I only
painted part way up the boot because I knew the top half would be covered by
the fabric strips and I just didn't feel like wasting paint. Then all I had to do
was wrap the strips around the boot, up the leg and tuck the end in at the back.
And that's it! Now you can go off and do some moisture farming or save the
universe. Don't forget to subscribe and big that bell for notifications. Have fun
making. See ya.
you