So my son wanted to be an X-Wing for Halloween...

TerranCmdr

Active Member
And naturally I accepted the challenge!

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Well, he specifically wanted to be Poe flying his X-wing. So I did the suit first. This was my 3rd Resistance pilot costume so I pretty much had the process down. However this was my first time lining a suit. Really not much more challenging than doing it unlined once I worked out the process.

I traced the patterns from the Kwik Sew 3389 and scaled them to my son's proportions in Illustrator. I already had 10+ yards of Solar Cherry in my stock for when I redo my suit so I used that. I used patterns for the pockets generously provided by Jynger in their build thread on Rebel Legion, scaled to about 65% which seemed to work well enough. The Solar Cherry is extremely difficult to work with because it doesn't really iron and it frays very easily. During this process I really wished I had a serger but I did a normal stitch and then went back and did an overstitch on every single raw edge. Even after that the suit has some blown stitches which is disappointing but I'll have to live with it. For the ribbing on the arms and collar I opted for a 2" ribbed elastic dyed with red and orange to match the suit. Not perfectly accurate but looks good enough to me. I lined the suit with cheap black lining fabric - I'd never done this before but basically I made a second suit out of the lining and started by attaching it at the zipper, then hemming it in at the legs and finally attaching it with the arm cuffs.

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I then moved on to the vest - this was made from my own patterns based on Philonius' excellent tutorial. My 4th one of these so I flew through it pretty quickly without any major issues. I now have the "Goldilocks" setup with vests with a full size, a 75% size and a 50% size (so cute!).

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Next I made the belt. I saved a velcro strap from when we bought a mattress from Ikea and it ended up being about the perfect size. I 3d printed the paddles and roll pin buckles and assembled with high-strength thread and chicago screws. The 3d prints were painted black and finished with Rub-n-buff. The "Ikea" portion of the belt is 2" and I bought some extra strapping for the lower part which is 1.5". For the chest box, I used this free file, printed at 75% scale. I modified it slightly to accommodate for lights and printed the buttons in clear and translucent resin. I didn't have time to add the lights but maybe at a later date. The hose I found on an air pump at the thrift store for $4 and it ended up being the perfect size. He put on some gloves he had from last year and his snow boots to complete the look.

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And that was the suit done! Continued in the next post...
 
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I wanted to knock out all the sewing in one go so I also made my younger son's costume at this point. We decided to make him a mechanic so I used a toddler jumpsuit pattern along with some mustard yellow fabric I found at Joann. I lined this one as well. Sewing the cuffs was probably one of the most difficult things I've ever done on the sewing machine but we got there. I added a pocket on the chest and intended to iron on a Rebel logo but it just didn't want to take for some reason. I planned to do pockets on the legs but was short on time so I added a little flare holder to the arm and called it finished. I added the belt from my oldest's Luke costume from two years ago (it actually matched the reference) and 3d printed a hydrospanner that I modified, and that was pretty much it for his costume. We ended up putting the tiny vest on him as well, it fit well and gave the costume a bit more interest.

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Back to Poe - he needed a helmet to complete the look and I had just the ticket. Years ago when my firstborn was a baby, I made a Pepakura pilot helmet. It was too small for me (honestly it looked a bit goofy but I was proud of it), but it's a great fit for him! So I stripped it down, sanded it, and sprayed it black. I quickly masked off for red and put it back together, job done for now. I will be adding the cream colored stripes, decals, and weathering when I have a chance.

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To be continued....
 
Anakin Starkiller , enterprise0216 Thanks!

Ok, the conclusion:
So by this time it was 3 days before Halloween and I hadn't even started construction on the X-wing yet :lol:

Earlier in the month I modeled out what I thought would be good proportions for the costume. I first made a true-to-proportion X-Wing model and scaled it over a digital version of my son. I could have made it this way but it would have been about 10ft long! So I scaled it down to get it as close to roughly 3' long by 3' wide as I could. It turned out pretty cute! I decided to use this as the base model for the construction.

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There's no easy way (that I know of) in Modo to automatically break down a model into its flat sides and lay them out, so I did that by hand. Taking each piece, breaking it apart, rotating it at the seams and then measuring the pieces and hand-drawing plans. There's no real dimension creation tool in Modo so this ended up being the quickest workflow for me.

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A few months back in preparation for this costume I asked my friends for any cardboard they might have. I was also lucky one day driving through my neighborhood and scored a huge box from a dining table. So I laid out one half of that huge box and got to work on the sides. I then went for the rear piece and the main body was already taking shape. I also used this project as an excuse to finally buy a larger hot glue gun and I am so glad I did!

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The rest of the hull came together pretty solidly, although it did have a slight lean but I don't think it's very noticeable. The cockpit was probably my favorite part. I also started working out the wing cannons. I had two sizes of PVC already in my garage so I built them off of those. I designed a couple of plugs and the semicircle part and 3d printed those.

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Finally it was time to tackle the wings. This was by far the most challenging part of the entire build. The wings on a T-70 are not symmetrical top-to-bottom so I had to create two sets of wing templates. The engines on the lower wings somehow came out a bit smaller but I don't think it's very noticeable. I tried to design them with strength in mind while keeping the build as light as possible. They consist of a main flat piece with side pieces glued on to create the correct angles. The wingtips I scored multiple times and bent up around the cannons. For the lower wings, I realized I should have designed them "hollow" side down and ended up capping them off to make them look a bit better. The engine tips are a wrapping paper tube cut into 4 equal lengths. In the middle of all this assembly I also started throwing some paint on any finished parts, this was the day before Halloween.

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With the wings complete I had to come up with a way to attach them. I also got word at this point that we were invited to attend a Trick-or-treat event at Pixar(!) the day after Halloween so I had to find a way to make the wings removable to fit in the car. I ended up using 1/4" styrene sheets on the inside of the cockpit, as well as thin sheets on the wings. I drilled holes and used 1/4" bolts to secure everything together. This attachment method worked very well but did increase the weight of the costume by a few lbs. Once everything was assembled I went to town with the black spraypaint (3 cans in all) and hastily masked and painted the orange stripes. I also folded over some cardboard and glued it into the cockpit on either side as rudimentary handles for my son. He absolutely loved walking around in his X-Wing on Halloween and we got tons and tons of compliments.

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And as I said above, we have a friend who works at Pixar and invited us down the day after Halloween to do a kids' event there. It was a ton of fun parading through the offices as animators handed out candy to the kids. I did have to carry his costume for most of it due to the tight spaces. The highlight though was that one of the employees brought her BB-8 out and the kids couldn't get enough of him! I was super impressed with the movement - I've never seen a BB move like that before. Very smooth and not a single wobble.

Anyway that was our Halloween journey this year! I'm thinking something smaller and less cumbersome next year. Maybe a family of Ghostbusters? Who knows! Thanks for reading!

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