And now for something completely different.

Do you know about Homestuck?  Probably not, unless you have a high-school age kid in your house and even then, probably not.  My daughter and her friends are all about Homestuck. They read it everyday. They go to meet-ups.  They own the sweatshirts.  And most importantly, they dress up as the characters.

My daughter’s friend needs a robotic arm to complete her outfit as Vriska the troll. 

Luckily, the arm isn’t all that complicated, but then, I’d never made an arm for a person or a troll before.  And gloves are tricky.  Even just tracing the outline of a hand only works if you are using stretchy fabric or if you allow space for the hand to sneak in.  All things you don’t think about until you are making a robotic arm.

But, I did it.  I made the lines in the fabric by pleating and stitching, allowing extra length for this (aren’t I clever).  Once done, I cut out the arm using a sleeve pattern.  So far. So good.

Then I did more pleating on another piece of fabric, with the pleats much closer together this time.  I folded the fabric in half, right sides together, outlined my hand on the fabric and sewed around the edges adding almost a quarter of an inch all around.  Then I cut out the hand.  This is where I discovered the need to leave that room from the hand to go into the glove.  ahhhh. yes.  right. 

So I cut open the glove on the thumb side and added a triangular insert, making the glove look more like a gauntlet.  I tried both pieces on and discovered that you have more movement leaving them as two pieces. 

I’ll have to try them both on my daughter’s friend next time she’s over but my daughter loves it.  As you can see (btw, that is my son in the background holding the troll horns – not made by me – on her head).