Time Warp:

• Black ripped tailcoat
  The tailcoat has peak lapels and is short in front with swallowtail tails in back. The transition from the front of the jacket to the tails is abrupt, not gradual. 2 large fabric-covered buttons placed vertically below the lapels on each side of coat. (These are easiest to see right before Riff goes to scare the monster.) The top button's (on Riff's left) fabric covering has worn off slightly (see the back of the DVD package for a great picture). There are also two fabric-covered buttons placed horizontally above the tails. Used tailcoats can be bought from a formalwear shop. Or cut tails out of black fabric and stitch to a suit jacket. (Elaine Truver includes a little sketch of how to do this here.) Both sleeves have been ripped out -- the right cuff only a little, the left cuff, almost to the elbow. A shred of fabric on the left shoulder stands up almost vertically--make out of fabric glued to a pipe-cleaner, segment of wire hanger, or part of a thin pet collar. There are also long string-like black shreds hanging from the jacket near the tails. Inner pocket on left side (store bloody rag to dry Janet here).

Takeover:

• Spacesuit
  Good luck.

  The color photo from the RHPS Book is a MIRROR IMAGE.
  {For a good photo, click here. Also check out the April 2005 Mick Rock calendar for a nice side view with a good view of the anklet/boots.}
  

  A few notes on material:
  Gene Chiovari swears by pressed lamé, where the metal is actually pressed onto the backing material. It makes me acutely nervous; I prefer tissue lamé, where the metallic threads are woven into the material.
  Lamé has a limited lifetime: my tissue lamé suit looked pretty good for about seven years, and I wasn't performing regularly for one of them. Eventually, the metal will wear off and you'll either have to appliqué new lamé over it (Bruce Cutter did this to his suit; it still looks great), or you'll have to make a new suit.
  Many people today use gold vinyl. This is probably closer than lamé to whatever the heck Sue Blane used, but it doesn't have as pretty a gold glint in my opinion. It is probably more durable. We'll see how today's suits look in about 8 years.
  Saffron Shearer-Gare, whose costumes pretty much set the gold standard for costuming, hand quilts her suits. I hand quilted mine, and found that machine quilting looks better to me. Hand quilting just permitted the fabric to move around too much, which made the pattern difficult to see, and also meant that some of the straight lines moved and had to be re-sewn. I'm presuming your sewing ability is closer to mine than to Saffron's, so I recommend machine quilting. (It is also much, much faster.)
  The entire suit should be reinforced with a layer of batting or foam or the quilting won't puff up properly. Gene Chiovari recommends 1/4" foam; Jaimie Froemming (the retired Berkeley costume mistress) says to use 1/4 oz. batting to give it body. The skirt pieces especially are visibly somewhat stiff.
  

  Full costume includes:

  • quilted gold wraparound top with front and back "skirt" flaps (quilted in diagonal squares and rectangles, NOT JUST SQUARES)
  • double black vinyl fins, each pair extending from the shoulder to the belt center, front and back
  • black lightning bolt pin (stitched-on looks wrong)
  • clear plastic-covered black belt with about 18 closely-spaced lines of horizontal gold stitching (clear plastic extends on either side above and below the black part)
  • flat black rectangular "buckle" with 4 gold half-cylinders (beveled ends). Buckle also has rows of horizontal gold stitching -- about 25 (it is wider than the belt).
  All edges of the spacesuit are "framed" by an unquilted border as wide as one of the quilted squares. For details on the pattern of stripes and squares, go to the "Quilted Spacesuit Patterns" section at the end of this page.

  Magenta's and Riff's suits are the same size; that's why hers is mid-thigh while his barely covers his underwear.

  The front and the back are each one piece with a scoop neckline. The front is shaped like a cross; the back is basically a vertical rectangle. The skirt piece flares a little bit, making it slightly trapezoidal. The suits fasten (front piece over back piece) at the neckline with a gold rivet-style snap on each side of the neck, and at the sides with 2 snaps placed vertically on each side where the front crossbar piece comes over the back (front and back overlap about 2"). For weekly use, I use nonfunctional snaps and a hidden Velcro fastening.
  

• Chrome pitchfork spacegun
  Richard confirmed on Rocky Radio June 8, 1999 that: "[The gun] was chrome, it was silver...it's some kind of fiberglass body that had been silvered somehow or other...plasticized silver."
  Both the handle and the "sight" (an upward-pointing prong) angle back toward the pitchfork handle and are tipped with a ball. An upside-down lightning bolt protrudes from the front of the ball on the "sight."
  The sight is attached to the gun where the prongs meet the pitchfork's handle. All the pieces (handle, sight, tines, etc.) have a round cross-section. There is a circular "guard" around the trigger which looks like a napkin ring. Handle is duller than rest of gun. The tines and the "sight" have a smaller diameter than the handle and the part of the gun that extends backwards beyond the handle. All three tines are the same length, and they taper.

  Use wooden beads from a craft store or ping-pong balls for the balls on the end of the tubes. Styrofoam balls are hard to paint and most glues melt them. Gun can be modified from a devil's pitchfork (use hot nails to hold it together--plastic glues badly) or be made of wood or metal. You can attach a box that makes electronic zapping noises, but no one will hear it. Some people put laser pointers in the tines. Red LED's at the end of each tine also look great when wired correctly. The best-looking gun I've seen that didn't require welding was made by Scott Matheus. It's plastic--he sanded it, coated it with red primer (a trick he from a public TV program on gilding), then applied two coats each of gold spraypaint and clear shellac. The problem with plastic is that eventually someone will step on it and break it (someone did).

• Silver gloves with black vinyl sleeves
  Sleeves are edged with thin border of gold lamé. There are three short stitched 3-D wavy lines (i.e., 6 lines of stitching, 2 defining each line) on the back of the glove near where the sleeve tip comes over the back of the hand. Riff's and Mags' gloves are also the same size. Silver gloves can be brought at bridal boutiques or accessories stores. You can buy silver firefighter's gloves from an army/navy surplus store, but they have leather palms, only 3 fingers and get really hot.

  The glove sleeves extend in a point over the back of the hands. The sleeves are made of shiny vinyl and will need to be reinforced to hold their shape. Try bridal stiffener or TimTex (a kind of stiff paper sold by the yard at fabric stores - TimTex is used for things like wide-brimmed garden hats or fabric bowls), buckram (a type of stiff cloth), or thin quilt batting.

  Sleeves (Riff):

  the inner edge of the sleeve comes to just under mid-forearm on the inner arm, while the outer edge comes to a point an inch or so short of the elbow.

  Sleeves (Magenta):

  the inner edge of the glove sleeve comes to just over mid-forearm on the inner arm, and the outer edge extends to a point just past the elbow. Do not cut sleeves too long on the inner arm or you won't be able to bend your elbows.

Quilted Spacesuit Patterns: (Sorry, no pics yet.)

All "left" and "right" directions are from the character's point of view.

Chest front:

A rectangle of 4 unquilted diagonal strips extends from the left neck (where the lightning bolt is pinned) to the right fin. There are 3 shorter strips that extend from the bottom of the lightning bolt to the left fin.

Front skirt:

A rectangle consisting of 4 unquilted strips extends down to Riff's right from the left side of the belt buckle. The top strip ends just a little beyond the edge of the buckle. The lower outer corner of the top strip touches the lower outer corner of an unquilted strip extending from the right side of the skirt. This strip and the 3 unquilted strips beneath it form a triangle on the right side of Riff's skirt. The final effect should look like a rectangle touching a triangle. Yes, this is nearly impossible to envision without a picture. Find some and puzzle it out for yourself.

Back top:

A rectangle of 3 unquilted strips extend from the center back down towards Riff's right. The right upper corner of the rectangle is even with the right edge of the neck-hole. An unquilted strip, even with the bottom of this rectangle, extends down to Riff's left and disappears under a fin. It forms a rectangle with another unquilted strip beneath it which is the same length.

Back skirt:

2 squares right from the border over Riff's left hip is the upper corner of a rectangle of 3 unquilted strips extending down towards Riff's right cheek. The upper left corner is one square from the left hip border of the skirt). There is one unquilted stripe even with the bottom of this rectangle which extends up toward Riff's right hip. It ends 2-3 squares diagonally from the right hip border.