Now that I have most of my materials, I set about actually making the costume. The first part is the belt. You’ll notice in the pictures, Cap’s WW2 outfit has a lot of ammo pouches and little compartments. I decided to limit the number of pouches to 5 for practicality’s sake. Also, I opted to leave out the suspender strap and pouches ’cause I think they would make it harder for Fuller to get the shield on and off his back.

In the flickr album, you can see how I cut out the pouch pieces, sewed them together, and added closures and belt loops. Then, I sewed a belt out of the duffel bag’s strap and added the cool narrow leather belt buckle assembly from the backpack. I even took the time to sew in the existing holes in the belt leather. It was painstaking, manually advancing the sewing machine needle, but I’m not going for second best dad ever. All-in-all the belt look pretty good and is adjustable, ta boot. This means Fuller (or heck, even I) could use it for some other costume as he gets older.

Finishing the belt, I turned my attention to the mask. The mask in the comics is made of leather. I have some vinyl, but I couldn’t bring myself to make Fuller wear a hot, sweaty vinyl mask. So, I opted to make the mask out white denim and dye it red. The choice of a red mask (over, say, a brown one) is purely a cost issue (I have red dye… I don’t have brown dye). And, there are versions of this costume where Caps sports a red mask too.

I needed a pattern. But, where does one get a superhero mask pattern? The answer is, “you make one.” So, I wrapped Fuller’s head in plastic wrap and stuck pieces of tape to the plastic until I had a pleasing mask shape. Then, I took the tape mask off, cut it into halves, selected the better half, and cut it into pieces that could be laid flat. Using those, I cut out the fabric I needed and proceeded to sew a pretty nice mask. Most of the mask is unlined, but I did add few touches like a lined and interfaced nose guard, and piping around the eye holes.

Originally, one eye hole was too big, so I had to re-sew it. Then, I noticed Fuller had trouble seeing straight ahead in it since the gap between the eyes was too wide. So, I had to cut into the well-sewn piping, enlarge the holes, and attach some new piping. Pressing the seams inside the eye holes was a challenge that I never completely mastered, so I ended up just hot-gluing them down.

Overall, I’m very pleased. I’d say it’s easily among the top 5 custom-made Captain America masks for a 3-year-old in the world. The next step will be the red dye, then attaching a chin strap to keep the mask from wiggling around on his head.

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