As we’ve blogged before, I’m steadily taking Fuller through the world of superheroes. Recently, with the elections and all, I’ve been feeling kinda patriotic so I’ve been reading Fuller some of the Captain America comics we bought with his costume winnings. With his birthday and Halloween coming up, I felt that this would be the perfect occasion to get started on a Captain America costume.

Now, a few years back, Marvel Comics created alternate timeline/ storyline called the Ultimates that modernized a lot of the classic characters. (It also increased the graphic nature of the situations, so be warned, these are not your father’s superheroes. For Example, the Hulk gets so enraged he eats people sometimes. Yes, you read that right.) Many of the character innovations from the Ultimate series have already worked their ways into pop-culture via the recent films. For example: Iron Man was originally set within the Vietnam War, now, it’s Afghanistan; Nick Fury (commander of S.H.I.E.L.D.) was originally a Dean Martin-esk Colonel, now he’s a General, and a Samuel L. Jackson look-alike; and Captain America originally fought in WW2 wearing his classic red-white-and-blue pajamas, now he sported a set of stars-and-stripes-themed army fatigues.

As you can see from the image above, this more militaristic outfit still lacks some subtlety, but makes up for that with increased functionality and just plain coolness. Can you guess where I’m going with this?

I decided to make most of Fuller’s costume from scratch and out of white denim. I’ve worked with denim a lot on my Auburn Elvis costume and it’s really very forgiving. I figured I could buy a couple yards of white denim and some red and blue dye and save myself a few bucks.

Notice that Cap’s WW2 outfit has a lot of buttons, pouches, and straps. Buying these notions at a fabric store would almost double the cost of the costume. A much more economical option is to go to the local thrift store and buy old clothes and luggage and salvage the notions needed.

I bought a women’s business dress for less than $2 that had 8 1″ metal buttons on the front and 4 1/2″ buttons on the sleeves. Those butons would have cost me about $15 new. I also removed the sholder pads and some of the lininng as well.

I bought a duffel bag/ backpack combo for about $2.50 that yielded enough fabric for all the pouches, four times the number of plastic snap clips, all the needed hook-and-loop tape, various leather accents, and a really cool leather belt end/ buckle set. A pair of snap clips from the fabric store would have cost the same as these two bags.

I did have to buy some notions from the fabric store since I didn’t want to spend every waking momment clipping thread with a seam ripper. I bought some interfacing, some hem tape, and some piping that, while more expensive than I’d hoped, will make this project much easier.

Oh yeah, I also realized that commercial pants would look way better (and be far cheaper) than any I could make, so I picked up a pair of size-5 blue trousers for about 50-cents as well.

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