Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Batman! (Tutu)

Most of my readers don't know that I'm a double agent who not only maintains Bob Crochets Craft Down, but also a second blog called #RunTylerRun. There I keep track of my running races and training. Rarely do the two subjects mix, but sometimes my crafting and running can become one and the same topic.

Since May 2013 I have run five half marathons, two of which have been the Costume Party Half Marathon*. For the 2013 race, I was still new to the whole idea of running, so I decided not to dress up. It was too intimidating to me, but for 2014 I knew what expect and I was ready. Three of us were running: Claudia, my mom TJ, and me.

A few weeks prior to our race, Claudia found superhero technical tees at her local Target and texted me saying that she'd purchased our race shirts for us. I was going to be Batman, Claudia was going to be Superman, and my mom was going to be Spiderman, because it was that or nothing. TJ was too petite for anything but a men's small, so shopping for her was...difficult.

We made it happen, though, and as soon as the shirts were purchased, I began work on the rest of my costume for the race. All it took was a trip on Wednesday to Old Navy to buy the pants I wanted and a second stop to JoAnn's for tutu material and I was off.

This is what my poor client's dining room table looked like for three days. I'm sure it looks clean, but as soon as tulle strips started to pile up, it became a total mess. In all, I think I used about twelve yards of tulle, but if I had been feeling really determined, I know that I could have used up all fifteen yards that I had purchased.

I alternated cutting and tying tulle as much as possible since both have a tendency to be tedious. In total the project took me three days and a boatload of Netflix episodes to get, through, but I ended up very happy with the fruits of my labor.

End of Work Day #1

 I have to admit that the photograph from Night #1 don't seem to show a lot of progress, but off camera there were a lot of piled up tulle strips ready to go for the next day. I also try and make my tutus as stretched out as possible, with just a little bit of overall give to them, so even though I cut a strip of elastic that was about eighteen inches long, by the end of the first night My elastic had already become about twenty to twenty-two inches in circumference.

End of Work Day #2, Front View

End of Work Day #2, Top View

At the end of Day #2 I had gotten to the point where I was headed around the back of the chair, a huge feat in any tulle tutu making process. From the top down, it doesn't look like much, but from the front, this Bat-tutu was starting to come together. I figured that if I got all the rest of my cutting done on Night #2, that I could spend my last day of work, Friday, just knotting on tulle.

And that's what I did. My Batman tutu was done after roughly 3:00 in the afternoon on Friday, a healthy two and a half days before CPR. Here's my horrible mirror picture that I sent to TJ and Claudia that afternoon.

 

And even better, here's our picture from race day!

See you all with a new post soon!

* For more information regarding CPR 2014, please click here.