Wee Ninja - Part 10

It's time for an updata on Project Wee Ninja. I've actually gotten a few things finished over the past week but I've been too busy to post them up because I've been A) Cleaning my work area's and B) Getting ready for my next car project.

With regards to the former, whenever I do a project I basically am a whirlwind of activity - tossing things here and there all whilly nilly. I suck at cleaning up as I go. I really need to work on that because I invariably spend at least a week cleaning up my garage/workshop several times a year. It also drives my wife crazy which is never a good thing.

With regards to the latter, I'll be starting that project this weekend so Wee Ninja needs to come to a close. I've got something on the order of a grand and a half of car parts strewn across my basement and garage. I'm a little more than anxious to start bolting things on.

As for Wee Ninja, here's where I'm at:

First off, my do-rag didn't work out as planned. Basically it looked like utter crap even after I cleaned it up so I decided to start the hat/mask completely over again. I figured out a couple of things:

1) Making hats is hard.

2) I really need to start with a template unlike some of the other garments I've made for this project.

I took a trip to Target a couple of nights ago and found what could possibly be the ugliest hat ever created by man (heretofore referred to as Ugly Hat):



Seriously: if you would put that on your kid for anything other than a hunting trip you need to be shot multiple times by a large caliber weapon.

It did however serve as a good template. I disassembled the hat, then used it to cut some patterns out of a lighter and more flexible cloth. Ugly Hat was a little too big for the munchkin so I appropriately sized the templates as I went.



What I ended up sewing together looks a whole lot better than my original attempt:



From there I basically sewed on a backing that goes over the base of the neck, then started working on the mask.



For the mask, I was wary of fiberglass or any other stiff material from the beginning. This is going on a rambuncious three year old afterall. The kid falls. I'd rather he not break his nose on the rebound. Instead of something terribly stiff I ended up using some foam from the laptop bag I'd broken down earlier in this project:



I covered this with some pleather, added some snaps and velcro to the hat and the outside then tried it out on Wee Ninja with the help of his mommy:








I'M GONNA GET YOU!!!!



While I was at Target picking up Ugly Hat, I decided that despite my original decision it was a good idea to add some shin guards. I went through the soccer isle and found a pair of Tiny Tots girls shinguards that were the right size:



These were orginally in a pair of socks which a quick cut with a pair of shears fixed. I covered these with some pleather tonight then added some velcro straps. The straps are really long at the moment but that's on purpose. I can trim them up once I get a chance to try them out on Wee Ninja.



Only the arm guards to go! I'll get those finished up hopefully tomorrow night. More to come!