'80s Cruise Costume 2023: Pigs in Space (Part 2 of 2)

The Materials: I bought most of the fabric on Etsy, and the other accessories on eBay and Amazon. I had zippers, snaps, elastic, and the felt & batting for the ears on hand.

$77.75  Lilac Lurex Glitter fabric for mens costumes 
$44.40  More Lilac Lurex Glitter Fabric
$74.23  Purple Glitter Knit fabric for Piggy
$30.40  Silver Glitter Knit fabric for Link's cape

$70.79  Silver Mirror Leather for belts

$15.18  Chrome Ball Buttons for men's belts
$14.48  More Chrome Ball Buttons for Link's sleeves
$20.53  Metallic Silver Spandex for gloves and epaulettes 
$23.96  White Embroidered Stars (4 packages)
$18.22  Felt for chest logos
$64.95  Boots for Link 

$64.95  Boots for Julius

$44.09  Boots for Piggy
$27.64  Wig for Julius
$21.44  Wig for Link
$11.99  Wig for Piggy
$14.99  Glasses for Julius
$15.02  Tights for Piggy  

$9.19    Poly-fil for Epaulettes  

$12.68  Tunic Pattern  

$12.99  Lilac Leggings for Link

$14.99  Eyebrows for Link & Julius

$14.95  Pig Noses (3) 

$719.76  Divided by 3 is an average of $239.92 per person.

The Construction: I started with the silver spandex because I've used this fabric extensively before. Dudley (aka Link Hogthrob) and I were also losing weight so I held off making our costumes until closer to the cruise.  The epaulettes were a little challenging because the ends are so skinny you can't stuff very well through them, so I designed them to be stuffed in the middle (on the underside) and closed them up with a little hand-stitching. The gloves have 3-fingers each just like the Muppets (but really, wouldn't  you think pigs would have 2?)

The Ears: I had a lot of anxiety about addressing the ears, and in the end I got some peach-colored felt sheets and batting and just free-styled the shape on my sewing machine. Turned them right-side out and ran some 16-gauge craft wire up through them. Success on my first try!  All three pigs have different shaped ears, but the method was still the same. Figuring out how to attach them to the wigs was a little more fussy, but still worked out well.

The Chest Emblem: Piggy's is visibly free-floating on top of her tunic folds. I considered embroidering a patch of sorts, but theirs is definitely is not embroidered. Okay then, maybe some stiff felt? I can cut that out on my Brother Scan-n-Cut machine. My first attempt was 5 layers/ the red bolt, the yellow bolt, the red circle, the black circle, and the pig head. That was too thick. So I nested the bolts into one later, and the circles into another. As for the pig face details, I tried using some Scribbles fabric paint but was unhappy with the results. Back to the Scan-n-Cut with some black vinyl I had on hand.

The Tunics: Piggy was draped on my dress form. Link was copied from a T-shirt that fit Dudley snug like I wanted, and Julius' was modified from a men's pajama pattern because he needed a raglan sleeve design, and pants. By this point things were speeding up and we were just a couple weeks from the cruise. 

Other Details: Dudley thought the pig noses would look better if they matched the ear color, so we painted them to match (not included in the expense list above). Link's eyebrows were darkened to match his wig. The belts were trimmed with strips of spandex. 

The Result: In all I was very happy with how they turned out. Can't really think of anything I would have done differently except shaped Link's ears a little better (but damn, they were weird). I probably spent about 30 hours total on this, and over $700. Was odd how many people asked us who we were supposed to be (on an '80s cruise), but I don't think it had anything to do with my execution.