Today is Salt Lake City’s very first Comic Con and The Grizzly Kid bought his ticket months ago. In fact, with his birthday next week it’s The Grizzly Kid’s birthday present to get to go to Comic Con and buy himself a souvenir. The Grizzly Kid asked me months ago if I would make him a Scarecrow mask, you know, like from Batman. Well that didn’t seem too hard since it is essentially just a mask made out of burlap and distressed to look super creepy. But you know me, pro procrastinator, I put the final touches on it this morning before he left and then we snapped a few photos.
The Grizzly Kid didn’t want to go in a suit all day so he wore his support Harvey Dent shirt instead to keep with the Batman theme. And I must say that it turned out a bit better than I expected. The process was simple and cheap. I got the burlap and some tan cotton to line it—I didn’t want him to be itchy all day—from Joann’s and used coupons to get a yard of each fabric for about $6. Then I found a roll of jute from Hobby Lobby for $4 to make the noose that holds the bottom together, and I have soooo much of it left over, but that was the smallest roll I could find. Instead of thread I pulled strings from the leftover burlap to keep the color the same and because it’s thicker and sturdier than regular thread. The mouth is done with black embroidery thread, and I also used the embroidery thread matched up with the burlap strings to make some of the distressing stand out more. I had originally thought that an embroidery needle would be big enough to put the burlap string through, but it was no where near big enough, so for a $1.50 I grabbed some yarn needles from Walmart. That put my total cost for the project around $11—perfect costume to not break the bank.
My process was really professional. I tossed the burlap over The Grizzly Kid’s head and used a marking pen to mark where I wanted it to hit and then cut it on the marks and used that to cut a similar pattern on the tan cotton. Then I tossed the burlap over his head again to mark where his eyes and mouth would hit, probably could have done it at the same time as the other markings and saved The Grizzly Kid some itchiness, but oh well. I cut out tiny eye holes—the distressing makes them bigger, and didn’t cut the mouth, just used it as a mark for my stitching. I cut super crooked lines up each side of the circle so I could stitch it back together and make it look more pieced together.
The stitching was interesting. It was my first ever project where not paying attention to my stitching made it look even better. So I let my hands to all the work and my eyes watched the US Open—poor Murray, not being able to hold his title in the semi-finals. The distressing was random and I used varying amounts of burlap and embroidery thread to keep it uneven looking.
And when I was done with all the stitching I tossed it in the washing machine to make it even more distressed and frayed—boy does burlap shed when it is washed! There were giant fur balls in the washing machine and we had to run a lint roller—which actually became rolled up tape when I found out our lint roller was dried out—over the sack multiple times. Luckily I had thought to put some fray-check around the eye holes before washing to keep them from getting bigger. The final step was to put the lining underneath and hand stitch it in place around the eye holes and across the top of the mask using tan thread and not worrying about if my stitches showed. All that was left was to cut the lining around the eye holes so The Grizzly Kid could actually see out and then get our little Batman into some pictures with his dad.
Wallaby could tell it was his dad, so he wasn’t scared, but aren’t those the creepiest childhood photos you have ever seen? Good story for his future I guess. Maybe we’ll get Wallaby a full Batman costume for Halloween…
And I just want to leave you with this creepy image in your head:
Wildfire Kisses 