Adventures in BSG Costuming

by spacepug

Never before have I tried to dress up like a character from one of my favourite shows on TV. Granted, I’ve never run a fan club before either, so this is all new territory! I’ve never had much of a costuming bent and I’m more likely to hurt myself with a sewing machine than actually put two pieces of fabric together using one. Alas, I decided that my husband and I would attend the 13^th Colony’s “Halloween on Caprica” party as the Chief and Cally.

Luckily, I started planning several weeks in advance. The first step was to acquire as many screen shots as I could. Many thanks to Galactica BBS for their wonderful galleries.

The orange jumpsuits were ordered from Gostwear in Quebec. You pay a little more for ordering orange, but you save on taxes & import duties when you buy within Canada. The BSG patches from ScifiGeeks.com Both were ordered early to allow for shipping time, but honestly, everything arrived quickly. The next trick was trying to find reflective tape for the stripes down the side. I found it at a local industrial safety store, but for the 30ft we needed for two costumes, it would have been $54 for one roll. I went down to local legendary fabric store Dressew and bought the same length of reflective ribbon for $9 and a $1 package of reflective tape big enough to make the squares on each side of the chest.

Luckily I have access to a grommet tool at work, so we were able to put grommets in the legs, though they aren’t nearly as large as the ones on the actual costumes.

It was the toolbelts that were the hardest. We figured out early that they must be affixed to the jumpsuits with snaps and once again Dresssew had packages of 10 large snaps with tools to apply them, for $3.50 Each costume used 14 snaps. Six on the front of the toolbelt, four on the back, and two on each wrist cuff.

It was really tough to find a soft vinyl with ridges. After looking in several places, we settled on a roll of rigid vinyl flooring from Home Depot for < $20. No amount of glue would affix the pockets, and I don’t have access to an industrial sewing machine, so I had to sew the pockets on by hand, using an embroidery needle and a metal thimble. After one day, my fingers were bloody. Later on, someone suggested using needle nose plyers to pull the needle through the vinyl. Good tip. Wish I’d thought of it earlier….

Finally, just because I’m a little twisted, I decided to go to the party as “Popsicle Cally” instead of just “Happy Cally.” Some blue eyeshadow and eyebrow pencil gave that fresh out of the airlock look, a liberal application of silver glitter for ice crystals and there you have it. The centurion in a noose was a great conversation starter…

It was a challenge but it was very rewarding. Still not sure I’ve caught the costuming bug, but at least now I have a great reason to con my husband into coming with me to Dragon*Con next year….. “But dear, we have such cool costumes to wear…”

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