I've been wanting to put together a proper pirate costume for a long time! I finally actually got around to doing so this summer when my friend was having a pirate/mermaid themed birthday weekend.
When I was in high school, I was involved with my church youth group, and one year we took a trip to the National Catholic Youth Conference (NCYC) in Columbus, Ohio. This was a ginormous event - enough to fill the Nationwide Arena (Wikipedia says that's around 20,000 people!!)
Anyway, one of the traditions at this event apparently was a hat swap - each member of each youth group brought a hat (frequently representative of their area), and if you saw a hat you liked better on someone else at the event, you could ask to swap. My group brought crab hats:
I traded my crab hat for I believe a few different hats, and ultimately ended up with this fantastic pirate hat!:
Years went by and I rarely had a good opportunity to use this hat! I held onto it because it's awesome and I knew eventually I'd put together a great pirate costume with it!
In college, my wife and I acquired a pirate blaster Nerf gun:
We played Humans vs. Zombies (HvZ) in college, and got in the habit of picking up any Nerf we thought looked cool. It's a good thing we kept that around, too, because it looks like the same blaster is going for at least $40 on ebay nowadays!
When I decided to actually put together a pirate costume for my friend's pirate birthday weekend, I decided to pick up a blouse and some pirate pants on Amazon instead of having to dig through in-person stores or other websites trying to find something that looked like what I was going for that actually fit me. I already had a blouse and corset I use for Renaissance Festival garb, but that look wasn't quite what I was looking for. But I figured I could use it as a backup in case what I got online didn't work for me.
I got this blouse in beige and these pants.
However, when the pants arrived, I discovered they weren't quite as advertised:
I had read the reviews before buying and knew I was buying a cheap product, so I really wasn't all that surprised. The pants actually had everything they said they had, but it was obvious that the ties on the legs were really more decorative than anything else. It looked like they had just made some cheap pants with a very cheap material, cut off the calves of the pants, folded them to add lacing with the lacing ~2 inches apart, then sewed the calves back onto the pants. The lacing would work, but only if your calves were only slightly less wide than your thighs - because there was only that ~2 inches + the folding for the lacing's worth of wiggle room for tightening the lacing.
Here's a diagram of what I mean:
But, I could work with this! The pants fit and were comfortable, and the fact that they were made of a very thin cheap material didn't bother me, because if I were to tear a hole in them, it would really only add to the pirate aesthetic.
I cut the backing behind the lacing (really just part of the pant leg since it was just folded to add the lacing), and that freed up the laces to tie any amount they needed to. I then measured my calf and fixed the calves of the pants to be slightly smaller than the size of my calves. I did this by ripping out the existing seam and removing the extra material, then sewing the seam back up. Fortunately for this fix, the seam was already elsewhere on the leg so I didn't have to add in a new seam or redo some of the lacing! If I were making these pants from scratch, I would have used the lace opening as the seam, but, like I said, these pants were clearly cheaply-made.
With this fix, I could now cinch the calves of the pants just below my knees, leaving a loose upper pant leg with tight calves perfect for putting on boots.
Additionally, I added some nice deep pockets to the pants, because they didn't already have pockets! I used some red fabric I had lying around to line the pockets for some extra flair!
The blouse wasn't amazing but it fit well enough and was about what I was looking for so I went with it.
The sash I made out of most of the rest of that red fabric I had lying around - it was just the right length to use as a sash without doing really anything besides cutting it into a rectangle! That red fabric is the same red fabric I used in my Candela costume.
The bandana I got ages ago! I have red, purple, and light blue bandanas, each of which I could have worn for this costume. I went with the red because it most fit the color scheme I had elsewhere in this costume. The red one I got when I was ~10 and my grandparents took me to a dude ranch - as like a cowboy kind of bandana! I think I got the purple one around the same time; not sure exactly where that or the blue one came from. I definitely used the blue one a lot during HvZ - I can't remember if I got it specifically for HvZ or not, but I do remember that I got the blue one significantly after the red and purple ones.
The necklace I'm wearing in these pictures is even older than that! My grandma gave me Willy the Whistling Whale when I was no older than 6, likely much younger. I have a vague memory of getting the necklace, but not the story behind it.
As for the rest of the jewelry I'm wearing:
The earrings are some of the same earrings I got for my Zia costume - the set came with both silver- and gold-colored clip-on earrings, and I used the silver for Zia and the gold for the pirate.
I grabbed some other gold-colored bracelets that I already had, to wear along with the outfit, but, ideally, I'd like some more bangles. Pretty much all the bangles I have are either silvery or shades of blue, so they don't quite go with the color scheme.
I have some other necklaces I could wear with the outfit instead of Willy the Whale (including a Vorin Heralds pendant that, from a distance, looks a little like the Aztec coin medallion from Pirates of the Caribbean), so I might change it up here and there :)
I also have some boots that have served me well for several other costumes, and for everyday use too! These are the boots I use for the pirate costume (in brown).
And last is makeup! I don't know much about makeup, but I've been trying to get better with eyeliner lately. It adds a little extra touch without having to have a whole face covered in gunk that will just need to be wiped off later. Eyeliner is definitely not an everyday thing for me but it's good for when I want to add a little more to my look! This is the eyeliner I've been using! Pirate eyeliner is easy as long as you can handle an eyeliner pencil* - just add eyeliner to all the eye edges :)
*easier said than done! my left hand is very incompetent
Kommentare