I'm seeing... Aliens?

A few weeks ago a friend from church contacted me about making her and her son some costumes for an annual block party she and her husband throw to celebrate their kids' birthdays.  Every year has a different theme and this year the theme was "Cowboys and Aliens".  She already had everything for the cowboy costumes she needed but had nothing for the alien costumes except for some fabric she bought at M&L.

 One of the fabrics she bought was an awesome lime green spandex with holographic "scales" all over it that she wanted me to use to make her son's costume.  Luckily he is a guy who LOVES to dress up and for him the tighter the fit the better the costume so it was pretty easy to sell him on head to toe spandex.  We were originally thinking "body suit" but instead went with a long sleeve top and stretch pants so that he'd be able to wear them separately if he chose to.  He had the idea that he wanted a silver breastplate on his alien costume so I had him draw up a picture for me.

Since I didn't have a pattern to use I decided to make one from some clothes he already had that we already knew fit him.  I used a pair of his pj's and laid them out on a large sheet of paper I had to make the pattern pieces.  Since the spandex wasn't as stretchy as the knit of his pj's I took that into consideration and added a little extra fabric to the sides along with 1/4 inch for the seams.

They came together super quickly using my serger (though they did leave the inside of my serger a big green mess).

My friend wanted a matching skirt so I made a basic tube skirt for her out of the same fabric.

He had the idea that he wanted a silver breastplate on his alien costume so I had him draw up a picture for me.  Using some silver lamé and batting I whipped up the breastplate for him and quilted it a bit to add texture, then I hand stitched it onto the shirt with a long stitch so mom could easily remove it if she wanted.

I also made some long capes for both of them out of a material I called "liquid metal", but really it was just a silver reflective-looking spandex.  Since I didn't want to add any weight to the capes and since the spandex won't fray I didn't hem the sides or bottom, I just made sure to cut them really smoothly. 

The party was Sunday and it was so much fun.  They had a permit from the city so they were able to block off the street for extra room.  There were probably close to 125 people there and almost everyone was in costume.  At one point in the evening my friend rolled out bubble wrap on the street and all the kids had a "bubble wrap dance party" on top of it.  It was a lot of fun to see all the kids hopping around on top of the bubble wrap.

Bubble Wrap Dance Party

The kids were dressed in a lot of cool costumes.  There were a lot of cowboys, and a lot of aliens, and there were even some alien cowboys as well as recognizable aliens such as Superman and Transformers.  There was even a Dr. Who.

Can you spot Dr. Who?

My Cowboy!