Holy crap! This week has been a rough one with the start of the new NYC remote school year. As I am writing this, I am recovering from the end of a 5-day marathon of on/off Zoom calls, technology problems (not on my end, but from the teacher’s) and thinning patience on trying to get my kid to stay focused on the long meetings. All I can say is I give big props to all the teachers out there, I have no clue how they do this with 20+ kids in the class. I got just one and now I feel like I need to Scrooge McDuck myself in a vat of chocolate to cope. But I digressed, ok, back to the point of this article.
I actually finished the bracelets a week ago, but finally got to this post now. I think the bracelets came out great! Before I start going through the steps I took, I have to warn you, I don’t usually measure things, and I am not about precision on these types of crafts. I like to experiment as I go and figure out the solution like a puzzle. This post isn’t meant to be a how-to guide, but more of a prototype approach to this particular project. Also, since these are for my kid, I am not looking for perfection either since they will probably get destroyed at some point. However, if you would like to attempt to create something similar, by all means, feel free to actually be more precise.
So getting started, if you missed the first part of this project, I had shaped two milk cartons into the basic frame for the bracelet gloves. Now I am going to cover them with fabric to match Starfire’s outfit. Choosing the light blue fleece, I wrapped it around the front of the frame and cut around the outline with an extra ½ inch border for sewing. Then using smaller rectangular pieces, I lined the inside portion, trimmed any excess, and proceeded to sew the pieces together. Since I hate wasting fabric, I used whatever scraps that would fit to cover the bridge that goes across the palm. Just to let you know, I do all my sewing by hand. I don’t have a sewing machine, and I don’t know if this particular project may be easy to attempt with a sewing machine, but if you are comfortable using a sewing machine, by all means, try it. After the entire glove was covered, I test it out on my own hand. It was actually quite soft and comfortable. I proceeded to repeat the same steps for the second glove.
Once the two gloves were completed, it was time to add the details. I had to think about how to approach the black lines and what looks like oval gems on the front of the bracelets. I thought about just drawing the lines with a black Sharpie marker, but since the fleece is fuzzy, it would be difficult to make it look good, especially if the fabric pills up. As for the oval gems, I looked in the Walmart crafts section for jewelry pieces, but didn’t find anything. I didn’t attempt to go to Michaels, since it would have been a separate trip just for those. In addition, using actual hard plastic gems have disadvantages:
- How do you attach them to the fabric without risking them falling off at some point? I can already picture countless time spent searching for a lost jewel everywhere because with kids, these are considered tragic search and rescue moments.
- Would hard plastic on the back of a glove lead to involuntarily scratching their own or someone else’s eyeball out? Because again, with kids, if there is a way to accidentally hurt themselves, they will eventually do it.
At the end, I decided that the safest solution was to fake them with felt. Good old felt, I use that stuff for everything from puppets to stuffed animals to costume parts. I had created head pieces in the past, which when I have time, will attempt to share in another post. So going back to the pieces, I dug up some scraps I had from other projects. Again, I hate wasting anything, so if it could be kept for future projects, I just toss them in a bag. I had several shades of green, white and black. Good to go!
First, to create the line patterns. I took the piece of black felt I had (which was your basic 9”x12” piece from Michaels but slightly used) and folded it in half. Then I folded it in half again, so it was in quarters.
I proceeded to cut the shape you see below on the left from the folded piece. While I didn’t measure and just estimated, I do recommend you should at least put the fabric up against the milk carton frame to ensure you don’t make the top part too wide. As long as you remember to keep the right side uncut, you should have 2 separate symmetrical pieces when you unfold it. Keep these aside.
Next, I cut several oval and curved shapes with the green and white felt. As you can see in the first picture, I had the darkest green on the bottom, then a slightly smaller lighter green oval, followed by curves to attempt the shine of a gem. Again, I just eyeballed the shapes, I didn’t have anything to trace the ovals with. If you have more precise tools, please use them. I proceeded to sew the reflection pieces to the smaller green oval. After that was done, I faced the detailed side towards the larger green oval and sewed the edges together, but not completely, leaving a wide enough gap to flip the pocket inside out. Once flipped, I stuffed them with batting and sewed them shut.
Now I needed to attach the gems to the black line pieces. Apparently they were a bit too wide, but it was ok, because it gave me an advantage to create a stronger support area. I pinched the extra material in the middle of the piece, folded an overlap and sewed it into a square area which is now double thick. This will ensure that the gem won’t tear the felt easily if it gets pulled too hard. I then proceeded to sew the back of the gem to the square area. You would want to give it extra support, so any way to sew a couple more stitches on the gem edges to the black piece is recommended.
Once both gems are completely attached to the black pieces, align these pieces to the gloves so they look to be in the proper positions. Affix the pieces to the glove using safety pins, and then proceed to sew along the outline of the black pieces to firmly attach them to the gloves. Remember to remove the safety pins when you are done. And voila! The bracelets are now complete and ready for testing.
I have to say, these came out better than I had hoped for, since I didn’t really have any plans and was making it up as I went. If I needed to recreate these, there are definitely areas I would have done differently and also measured. The fleece made these gloves super soft and very comfortable to wear, that Melody wanted to wear them to bed. I didn’t let her since I didn’t want her to destroy them before Halloween.
Hopefully with over a month left, I have time to get the rest of the costume completed. The next challenging piece looks to be the weird collar around Starfire’s neck. I will need to find a way to make it stay up. Hopefully I can think of a solutions for that.
Thanks for reading and see you in the next post!
For the collar, use of the plastic collar bands that are located in the collar when you purchase men’s dress shirts. That’ll keep it up.
Good idea! I have to find one, but in the future I’ll make sure Rob saves these for other projects.