I'm Scott from customers for Christ and you're watching creative costuming today I'm going to show you how to make a spandex cowl I'll be making a flash cowl but you can use this same pattern and technique to create a Captain America cowl for instance or Red Robin or Space Ghost or whatever other Cal Waring crimefighter that you can think of and so here's what you're going to need for this project you will need a pair of scissors a washable marker or disappearing ink pen something to mark on the fabric with you're also going to need a face mask of some kind and you can get ones like this at Party City or other party supply stores Halloween stores stuff like that you could also use the little white ones that you see it craft stores like Joanne's or Hobby Lobby I actually prefer to use Batman masks for my under shell I like the rigid brow line and the stronger features it looks a little bit more super heroic and you're also going to need something to trim the mask so that you have only what you need if the plastic is soft enough then you can just use a pair of scissors if it's a harder more rigid plastic then you'll have to use like a dremel or other rotary cutting tool which is what I did for this one this was actually a Batman mask as well I just used my dremel and I cut off the ears cut away the sideburns and then cut away the nose and this is all that's left and what what I need for a flash under shell so that'll go underneath the fabric the spandex so it doesn't really matter what color it is or anything like that you're also of course going to need some spandex this is for waist stretch lycra there's a really good selection of this at jo-ann fabrics now if you can't find what you're looking for there then you can also check out spandex house comm or spandex WorldCom and finally you're going to need this downloadable pattern all you have to do is click here and that will take you to my blog where you can download this pattern and you'll notice that it's five pages the first page just shows you what the should look like and then there's four more pages with the pieces on it all you have to do is print that cut the pieces out tape them together and you should have two pieces that look like this one is for the center front and one is for the sides and once you have those cut out all you have to do is then lay them on your spandex fabric and trace them with your disappearing ink pen or washable marker onto the fabric make sure that you make two of these you need one for the right side one for the left side so trace it face up first then flip it over and trace it again face down and oh make sure that you include the little triangle notches here that is so that you can line up the center piece with the side pieces once you begin to sew so once you've got those pieces cut out you should have one centerpiece that looks like this and two side pieces that look like this and if that's what you have then you're ready to start sewing now that we're at our sewing machine I want you to make sure that you've got your machine set up properly so make sure you got your thread the spool and the bobbin in place we're using just a regular presser foot for this so no reason to change it but we'll be using stitch number three if you're using a Brother sewing machine if you have a different type of sewing machine it should look like a lightning bolt and if you don't have a stitch like this one you can use a regular straight stitch this runs the risk of popping however and so it's a lot better if you can use the lightning bolt stitch that's actually a strip a straight stretch stitch it's designed to stretch with the fabric so that's what we're going to be using now what we want to do is take the fabric we're going to take this side panel and we're going to take the center panel and we're going to line up this corner with the corner on the side panel and in order to do that we'll just turn it so that it's facing the same way like this and we're going to get those that little triangle those two triangle cutouts need to be lined up and once that's lined up you make sure that your edges are lined up as well and we're going to start sewing right here on this spot right there so just carefully move your piece into the sewing machine get that little dot that I just made right underneath the needle and make sure that you hold your thread while you lock in place now all you have to do is sew all the way down this edge lining it up with the curve of the hood as you go and you'll make sure that these two triangle pieces that we come to later on also line up and it'll help you keep everything in place once you get down to the end you just want to lock that stitch in place and you'll notice I have a little bit of excess on the center piece that's normal that's why it tells you to leave an inch or two on the pattern but we're going to come back up to that starting point that we have where that little dot is and we're just going to flip the fabric over and stitch on either side now and what I'm going to do is I'm going to make a little snip at that corner that goes almost through the dot and then we're just going to line it up going the other way so you line up the next V cut and you want to start sewing from that exact same spot that you started the last time but this time we're coming down the front of the mask and set it over the head and down the back and you want to stop before you get to the bottom edge of centerpiece I'll show you want to talk about once you put the face shell underneath here part of this is going to get folded up and glued underneath the face shell so you want to leave a little bit of leeway for you to do that fold but once that is done then you just go and you do the exact same thing to the other side using your other side piece and we'll be finished sewing for that all right once you finish sewing both sides to the centerpiece you should have something that looks kind of like this we're going to link this Center seam that goes right down the neck unfinished for now because it's a lot easier to get the face shell inside of here with that part open but you can flip it inside or right side out that is and kind of see how it works even maybe try it on and that gives you an idea of what we've got so far now once you get that done we're ready to glue the patient one side all right everybody once you've got your fabric tiles sewn together the next step is gluing the face shell inside of the cowl now I'm going to tell you upfront this may or may not be the best way to do this project but it's the best way I figured out so far I recommend using super 77 Spray glue from 3m now the upside to this glue is that it holds up really well it's very durable I made this Captain America mast like four years ago and it's still in good shape using the same process however it's kind of a pain in the butt because it bonds instantly it doesn't give you a lot of time to maneuver and get stuff positioned properly so you pretty much have to get it right the first time and there have been times where I had to tear the whole thing apart and start over again which can be frustrating and if that happens to you I'm sorry but if you come up with a better technique or better glue to use let me know for now this is the one I'm going to recommend also you may need to depending on the type of base shell that you're using you might want to get some sandpaper and rough it up just a little bit that'll help the glue stick to it and give you a more permanent bond so what we're going to do is we're going to spray glue this face mask then we're going to put it on my fifth friend Ed here and then we're going to put the fabric over that and get it all into place if you don't have a saira foam head you can do this on your own head if you've got somebody's help you'll notice I still have the elastic band here and that's just so that we can get this on to the mannequin head and then place of course I got some glue on my fingers I need to look at this guy I'm going to carefully take the cowl put it on over the styrofoam pad try to get this all lined up properly the first time and I failed like I said there's going to be some trial and error here so just do the best you can until you get it positioned properly okay this might not be perfect yet I'm probably going to work with it a little bit more but as you can see I kind of pressed and smooth as I go and I've got the brow line and you can see the edge here of where the cow stops all that's going to get tucked up inside of it and then glued in place on the other end but from now it looks like that's a pretty good start so what I'm going to do next is we're going to take this off of it and and then we're going to glue we're going to cut the eye hole tuck that up in glue it in place tuck these pieces and glue them in place and we'll see how it looks alright so what we're going to do now is we're going to trim off some of this excess that goes down past the edge of the face show we don't need to have all of that we just need about half of an inch or a quarter inch now that we have it like that next when they glue it behind the shell I'm going to be putting hot glue right in here and then folding and pressing this down onto it trim a little bit more first you can see I'm cutting a triangle shape away here that's so that when it folds in it will fold like that and then like that and give you that nice pointed edge that you're looking for now we're ready so you can see this is what it looks like on the inside here and this is what it looks like on the outside I'm just going to do the same thing over here there we go next we're going to do the eyes what we do is we cut a slit right across the center of the eye almost from edge to edge very close to the edges and then I cut another little slit that comes down like that and one that goes up like this just to allow that flexibility you see then again we go to the inside and start with one of those four pieces put some glue down and make sure that you stretch and pull the fabric as you glue it into place there you go now you can see how that eye looks and you just need to do the same thing for the other eye probably have a whole lot of little hot glue strands to peel away and clean off but once that's done then you're finished with the gluing and what we have to do next is hem this jaw line and then sew that Center seam that runs right down the neck together and you're ready to try it on well this is the finished product as you can see I just hem the jaw line here and then I also hamd all the way around the neck line at the bottom I then sewed that Center seam on the middle of the neck I'm especially happy with the way this turned out because of the face shell underneath I think it has just the right look for the flash by the way I'd love to know what projects you're working on so let me know in the comments section what you used this tutorial to create whether it was a flash cowl or Captain America cowl or something else altogether also don't forget to subscribe we've got plenty more costuming tutorials coming your way and if you have any questions or suggestions for future videos just let me know in the comments section in the meantime thanks for watching god bless and happy customer you