For this Greens and Machines blog post, I will be going over the steps I took to make a Wario Costume from off the shelf items. Not nearly as complex as the Coach Z costume, but I am certain someone will want to reference this post later when they go to make a costume.
How do you put together a costume of my favorite character from the Super Mario universe? It is less complex than you'd think.
There are 4 main pieces to the Wario Costume (and a few extras, but those aren't critical).
The Shirt and Overalls
For this post, I'll be going over dyeing the overalls. For the items I needed to sew, the hat and the gloves, read the post here.
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The Overalls
The centerpiece of the Wario costume are his signature purple overalls. If you were to make a Mario, Luigi, or Waluigi costume, this part would be easier for you, as each of them wear a shade of blue overalls. Purple is not a color you can go to the store and buy off the shelf. This leaves you with 2 options, take a chance and buy some off the internet, if you can find them in your size, or even at all, or buy a pair of overalls and dye them yourself. I took the latter route.
The denim overalls I sourced from Wal-Mart in a size that I could verify fit me, $37 before tax.
To turn them purple, I would need purple dye, but these overalls were a dark shade of blue already. Ideally I would need to lighten them a bit. One option is chlorinated bleach, but that could end up damaging the fabric in the long run. The other option is to use this dye remover product, sold by the same company that makes the dye. Even though it says "not recommended with denim", I figure it is the safer option for the fabric.
Lightening the fabric requires heating water in a large kettle, dissolving the dye remover, and soaking the overalls in it for 30 minutes. For this, I did it outside, opting to use the homebrewing kettle and propane burner. For safety, I wore safety googles, and a pair of chemical resistant gloves. I'll describe in a bit how nasty the vat became.
With the overalls in the vat, they started to turn yellow. There is a reaction between the dye remover and the indigo dye that causes the fabric to turn yellow. When the denim is exposed to air after this treatment, the fabric quickly turns color, back to blue. I was able to lighten the overalls to a lighter shade of blue. This would have to do for dying to purple.
In the dye bath, I mixed together the 3 packets of dye, 1 cup of sodium chloride salt, and a drop of dish soap in some warm water, as instructed. The overalls went into the bath for 30 minutes. I was skeptical at first, but as the overalls sat, they began to turn the rich purple color I was looking for.
Immediately after soaking and stirring in the dye bath, the overalls were transferred to the color fixative bath I had prepared. This I soaked and agitated in for about as long as the dye bath.
Previous Post: Sewing the Hat and Gloves
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