Captain America

Captain America! This project was a ton of fun.

 

You wanna know the best part?

 

The mask is removable!

 

In case you want to be casual and let people know your identity you can just zip that sucker right off!

 

A (sideways, sorry) photo of my color-coded pattern piece.

 

The stripes for the front of the jacket assembled- this was the very easy quick part. Now it was time to put all the stripes aside and get ready for the big job:

 

Scale armor! Could not let the Captain come to life without his scale armor. Now, I have definitely witnessed some amazing craftsmanship on some Captain America costumes with individual vinyl scales, but this was not exactly that kind of project. This was a little more casual, and yet I still wanted those scales to be included, so I decided on machine embroidery. I made a "scale stencil" out of some cardstock and drew it with tailor's chalk onto each sleeve, front and back yokes.

 

Stitching the scales on the machine, of course using my beloved satin foot. The chalk looks like an accent or highlights on the scales in this photo, huh? Let me tell you- this part of the project took hours, spinning those pattern pieces back and forth to make hundreds, or thousands of those little "u" shapes. Like I said, this project was a lot of fun, but I'm just saying, hours of stitching.

 Here's a funny thing. I used tear-away interfacing while stitching all of those scales so I would not stretch out my beautiful knit fabric. Sometimes tear-away interfacing is a little difficult to actually tear-away, especially with these little repetitive shapes.....

 

So, tearing this stuff off took way more time than expected. As you can see the big pile of torn off pieces there on my work table. It almost took as much time to get it off as to sew it on!

 

After all those scale pieces were in order I assembled the sleeves, front and back, then stitched the jacket together. In this photo I am serging the rib waistband to the bottom of the jacket.

 

I drafted a pattern for the hood, and modified a costume pattern for the mask. The mask is fully lined and has one half of the separating zipper that will attach it to the hood.

 

Some finished looks- but obviously it looks much better on a person.

  

Here is the back view.

 

 Close up of the front; star applique, separating zipper, and scales! It's subtle, but the end effect is wonderful.