Recently, my sister, cousin and I (a mischevious bunch…) have decided we absolutely must make a video clip for the song “Errol Flynn” by Jinja Safari. The reason being that Errol Flynn obviously played Robin Hood in “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (fantastic movie!).
However, it has been quite a struggle to get enough merry men. Most guys we know aren’t too interested in dressing up,
playing with bows and arrows... and being published on
youtube. Don’t know why...
So, to make their plight easier, I have decided to create a nice, simple tutorial on how to make your own Robin Hood or merry man costume! Using one of my favourites for every dress-up occasion… op-shops!
This is the end product (just pretend I am a man for a second):
What you’ll need:
- 2-3 op-shop (or old) earthy coloured shirts
- scissors (fabric scissors are best)
- 30cm ruler (or similar length object)
- Scrap fabric 60cm x 30cm, earthy colours
- pencil/texter
- brown/black belt from op-shop (you can use fabric)
- brownish boots to go with outfit
- tights/skinny legs/trackies to go with outfit
- bow and arrow will be good too
1. Buy a few shirts from an op-shop… depending what colour you are going for. You will probably want to go for earthy tones… green, brown, grey, orange etc. The trick is to LAYER up a few earthy coloured shirts. If you can find a long sleved one for starters, to go underneath, then one or two plain-sleeved t-shirts.
This one I got for $1, and I just chucked a belt around it and it was good enough for a simple merry man shirt:
2. Time to rough the shirts up a little! This green shirt I bought for $2 from the op-shop! I had fun cutting it up! Cut the edge of the sleeves, the bottom of the shirt and the top of the shirt near the neck. It’s best to cut a v-neck into it. This makes it look a lot more like some guy has been wearing it constantly while living in the forest!
Tip: Keep the long bit that you cut from the bottom of the shirt, this can be used as an armband or legband later.
3. Time to make a hat!! Here’s my tacky tutorial on how to make a Robin Hood hat!
………………
a. Grab some scrap fabric in an earthy colour of your choice! (you can get scrap fabric from some op-shops too) You’ll need around 60cm x 30cm of scrap fabric. Fold it in half.
b. Grab around a 30cm ruler (in my case I just used my husbands starcraft book… it’s about the same length!) and measure from the folded corner, to the edge of the fabric. Mark it.
c. Then you’ll want to just slowly move the ruler/other object the same length as a 30cm ruler, a little, keeping one end of the ruler in the folded corner, and moving the other. Mark each point so that you end up with a circular shape going on.
d. Once you’ve marked the whole way to the folded edge, you’ll want to connect the dots, join them up, in a roundish sort of way!
e. Then cut it out on that line!
f. And hopefully when you fold it out, it looks like this:
g. Now you want to fold it back over, and sew the straight edges together. For the purpose of this exercise I have just safety pinned mine… sewing is better, but you can get away with safety pins!
h. Fold it inside out!!
i. And lastly, fold one edge up as per photo… and sew/pin just a tiny bit near the top of the fold. Do the same for the other side. And you’re done! You can add a feather too, if you like. Just sew it or safety pin it into the fold.
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4. Now just chuck on some tights/skinny jeans/trackies and some boots, layer the shirts on top of eachother, wrap the scrap from the shirt around your arm for an armband, put the hat on and you’re done!
Pretty easy really :) Mix and match! Have fun. And come be in our video once you’ve got your costume sorted, thanks!
