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| tea water and some salt. |
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| white to tusken sand |
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| babybath serves as a dye bath |
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| round 1 , wet and dark looking |
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| oops the roof in the winter garden leaks... |
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| round 2 this time with walnut added to the mix. |
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| much better colour with more variations. |
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One of my Squad mates is doing a Tusken doing as in collecting the parts to put an outfit together. When I asked him about the soft parts ( ie the clothing bits) he said he was waiting a bit to afford them which sort of sent a bell off in my head.
When I made my tusken girl the most expensive part of the whole costume was the mask, the rest was dirt cheap because I used what I had handy and I have a lot of stuff handy. I used old sheets for most of the costume and old flannel sheets for other parts and some canvas I had kicking around. I dyed everything with tea and coffee and then weathered with paint stuff I have here. It was easy and cheap. When I heard how much he was planning on paying for an inner and outer robe I made an OMG face. 100.00USD for the outer robe alone. yoiks, The fabric in the US is not expensive, dying it costs pennies and sewing it is two straight seams, a few more if you are doing a hero version. The longest part of the whole process is waiting for the fabric to dry after it's been dyed. I think 100.00 USD for an outer robe is bloody highway robbery but that's just me because I can do this stuff myself. I guess if you can't you'll pay for it. Anyway... after this conversation I offered my help. He's a squad mate, you help your squad mates. And I like to do this stuff, it's no brainer costuming. So I will make him his inner robes and sash. The whole thing will probably cost me around 5 euros since I buy the fabric dirt cheap on flea markets, we have old tea in the house always, thread I have in abundance also thanks to flea markets and my time is well spent learning to get it right.
Personally I think if you are spending more than 50, euro on the soft parts something's wrong with the picture. ( again this is just me and I'm Scottish so I don't like forking out a fortune for something I know I can make on the cheap.) So we agreed on a small price and now I am in the process of getting the fabric ready. I started with a straight forward tea bath, it was a lovely light sand shade when it dried but then, drying in the wintergarden, the roof leaked and created a perfect bulls eye so I needed to redye. I did that this morning and it took around an hour in between I got other stuff done. This second dye job had the added bonus of walnut shells/husks to add a deeper brown colour. I get the striations by draping the fabric in bunches and tossing the rest of the dye on the sheets while they hang then I let nature and the wind do the rest.
The nest step will be to cut and sew the robe. Then make the sash and redye that darker as it is usually a more contrasty colour than the robes. Tuskens are fun to make you get to do cool stuff like weathering and so on. And it shouldn't have to cost an arm and a leg.
