Elisabeth Jean: The Madness Which Comes Before Midnight

(you can't tell he had it wadded up in his pack all day, right...)

The #MidnightMadness tradition at GCU gets bigger & better & wilder & crazier every year.

(These tickets were a precious commodity --
many were turned away at the door!)

(They start planning the event more than a year ahead!) Last year was our family's first glimpse of the impressive spectacle.

My drummer's costume from a year ago was mostly thrift-store items with a little sewing/crafting added on. This year, however, we decided to complicate things by only having a children's-sized costume pattern! We'll get to that after the videos:
This is GCU's take on the whole evening. (Can you tell why they call it MADNESS?) There's a split-second glimpse of the drumline's show at about :31. I don't think my pirate got in the frame...

And this is our view from the other side of the arena. What fun!

But before all the fun, there was much hard labor in assembling the drummer's costume:

(Duncan is an excellent snoopervisor...)

Drafting an enlarged vest wasn't near as difficult at getting those boot covers big enough to disguise size 14 marching shoes!

I found these tools to be invaluable when sewing vinyl!

I used upholstery thread in the needle because I knew tugging these on & off would put a lot of tension on the stitches.

I saved a little time by using the embroidery machine set-up to stitch all 17!!! buttonholes. I covered the buttons with yellow fabric and then brushed them with gold metallic craft paints.

The welted pockets are not something I'm going to try again anywhere in the near future!!!

The sash was split in sections & stitched to wide Velcro® so it was quicker to don than winding/unwinding yards of fabric. I used my Silhouette® to cut the gold antelope logos. The belt I made from some leather yardage. I was going to embellish a large buckle with the 'Lope's logo, but since the drummer was wearing his drum all night, it would've been a waste of time...

The grey pants came from a thrift shop and got 2 cans of paint sprayed into stripes.

It was my plan to find stage make-up gold pirate teeth & to fill the drummer's fingers with rings. I got an emphatic "no" on the teeth & a "Mom, you know I won't be able to perform stick tricks with that junk on my hands, right?" I did talk him in to wearing a plastic gold (touched up with a little of my metalic paints) pirate earring.

What I was not expecting was his vision of a handful of shrunken skulls attached to a rubber knife. The skulls would have the logos from GCU's seven division rivals.