wetcelery
Active Member
Re: ALIEN Ellen Ripley Costume Tutorial (Flight Suit & Shirt)
CORD
Oops, nearly forgot to write about this part. So here's a quick post about it.
As you probably know, a key feature of this flight suit is the back detail and the lacing involved. As it was part of the suit, it is unmistakably some sort of heavy duty cord. As joberg has previously mentioned before on this thread that it is parachute cord. I looked online to see how much it was and found that the average price ranged from £10-£20. I wasn't too keen on buying this online for a few reasons: firstly, it was hard to tell what the colour truly was in person, and with my suit being rather unpredictable in terms of colour, I didn't want to risk buying something too dark/too light; secondly, I made the loops on the back and they're not necessarily uniform in size, so I was concerned that the cord might be too large for them or too small and make the lacing look a bit... empty; and thirdly, you could only buy cord in large quantities and I didn't want so much. Of course, on top of this was the price.
So my thoughts to get round this was shoelaces. I found a stray round black shoelace kicking about the house and found that it worked really nicely. I tried looking online to buy a pair but again, concern about colour, thickness and length came up. However, what if I bought my own and dyed them with the suit? That seemed to solve my concerns, and off I went to some Pound Shop in Glasgow and got this:
They weren't ideal (flat, instead of round; shorter than what I wanted) but they were good enough. I cut one up and sewn them to two shoelaces to make up for the length. Afterwards, I chucked them in a dye bath left over from my first dye attempt. As it was quite a while since it was "fresh", I thought leaving them in for a few days would do the trick. Unfortunately, that was not the case. It took some colour but not very much. When I rinsed it before trying, nearly everything came out. It looked a real pale, tinted bluey-white. With the added fact that shoelaces are often composites of polyester or some sort, it makes it even harder for it to take dye; and even more so when the dye has been lying about for a while. So I waited until I did the full suit dye to try again.
When the time came to do the full dye, I duly added the shoelaces to the process. In fact, I gave them a separate bath of purely concentrated dye mix (recipe for Country Blue). Leaving that in for a day didn't help either as some of the dye still came off after a rinse, though not as bad as it initially did. So I left it in for a few more days and came back to it. This time, I wouldn't rinse but leave it to dry. But all the whilst, I wasn't too keen on it.
Until one afternoon, I went wandering in the fabric store to buy pink piping for the Nostromo shirt (which I will also detail my adventures later!) I found 100% cotton cord! If only I had seen it sooner but at least they had it in stock. They had about 6 different sizes, which allowed me to compare and buy only as much as I needed: ranging from about 20, 30, 40, 60, 80. I was stuck between 30, 40 and 60. I felt 60 was too thick and 30 possibly verging on too thin, so my gut was to go in the middle and buy the 40. I went with the measurements of that one stray shoelace that fit snugly, which was about 46" and bought a little extra. So I ended up getting 100" (50" for one when cut in half) and this only cost me £1.04 - cheap, correct size and colour could be corrected. Perfect.
Went and chucked that in the bath with the suit. Here it is after the dye:
This is noticeably bluer and lighter. Of course, this took the dye differently to the suit because keep on mind the cord was plain white to begin with whereas the suit had previously been a khaki before going grey. Not exactly matching but I felt it was good enough and went with it.
After, I cut the cord in half and sealed off the ends using cellotape and a glue gun, just to tie off the ends so it wouldn't fray. And then it went through the loops. I found that because I shoddily finished off the ends, the glue gun blobs were larger than what I would have liked and would sometimes be quite stubborn to get through the loops, so using tweezers to tug them through really helped.
CORD
Oops, nearly forgot to write about this part. So here's a quick post about it.
As you probably know, a key feature of this flight suit is the back detail and the lacing involved. As it was part of the suit, it is unmistakably some sort of heavy duty cord. As joberg has previously mentioned before on this thread that it is parachute cord. I looked online to see how much it was and found that the average price ranged from £10-£20. I wasn't too keen on buying this online for a few reasons: firstly, it was hard to tell what the colour truly was in person, and with my suit being rather unpredictable in terms of colour, I didn't want to risk buying something too dark/too light; secondly, I made the loops on the back and they're not necessarily uniform in size, so I was concerned that the cord might be too large for them or too small and make the lacing look a bit... empty; and thirdly, you could only buy cord in large quantities and I didn't want so much. Of course, on top of this was the price.
So my thoughts to get round this was shoelaces. I found a stray round black shoelace kicking about the house and found that it worked really nicely. I tried looking online to buy a pair but again, concern about colour, thickness and length came up. However, what if I bought my own and dyed them with the suit? That seemed to solve my concerns, and off I went to some Pound Shop in Glasgow and got this:
They weren't ideal (flat, instead of round; shorter than what I wanted) but they were good enough. I cut one up and sewn them to two shoelaces to make up for the length. Afterwards, I chucked them in a dye bath left over from my first dye attempt. As it was quite a while since it was "fresh", I thought leaving them in for a few days would do the trick. Unfortunately, that was not the case. It took some colour but not very much. When I rinsed it before trying, nearly everything came out. It looked a real pale, tinted bluey-white. With the added fact that shoelaces are often composites of polyester or some sort, it makes it even harder for it to take dye; and even more so when the dye has been lying about for a while. So I waited until I did the full suit dye to try again.
When the time came to do the full dye, I duly added the shoelaces to the process. In fact, I gave them a separate bath of purely concentrated dye mix (recipe for Country Blue). Leaving that in for a day didn't help either as some of the dye still came off after a rinse, though not as bad as it initially did. So I left it in for a few more days and came back to it. This time, I wouldn't rinse but leave it to dry. But all the whilst, I wasn't too keen on it.
Until one afternoon, I went wandering in the fabric store to buy pink piping for the Nostromo shirt (which I will also detail my adventures later!) I found 100% cotton cord! If only I had seen it sooner but at least they had it in stock. They had about 6 different sizes, which allowed me to compare and buy only as much as I needed: ranging from about 20, 30, 40, 60, 80. I was stuck between 30, 40 and 60. I felt 60 was too thick and 30 possibly verging on too thin, so my gut was to go in the middle and buy the 40. I went with the measurements of that one stray shoelace that fit snugly, which was about 46" and bought a little extra. So I ended up getting 100" (50" for one when cut in half) and this only cost me £1.04 - cheap, correct size and colour could be corrected. Perfect.
Went and chucked that in the bath with the suit. Here it is after the dye:
This is noticeably bluer and lighter. Of course, this took the dye differently to the suit because keep on mind the cord was plain white to begin with whereas the suit had previously been a khaki before going grey. Not exactly matching but I felt it was good enough and went with it.
After, I cut the cord in half and sealed off the ends using cellotape and a glue gun, just to tie off the ends so it wouldn't fray. And then it went through the loops. I found that because I shoddily finished off the ends, the glue gun blobs were larger than what I would have liked and would sometimes be quite stubborn to get through the loops, so using tweezers to tug them through really helped.
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