Halloween is coming

It’s nearly the best time of year again: Halloween!  I was inspired to make today’s post by one of my current projects, which is turning this Beautiful vintage marching band jacket into something I can use for a Creepy Ringleader costume.

This jacket is easily the best thing I’ve ever found at a thrift store, costing me only $6 AND it came with that adorable skeleton brooch.

When I first found this jacket last year, I looked up Uniforms by Ostwald, the company who manufactured it.  I couldn’t clearly find when the company was founded, but it was around 1930.  This source stated that the company closed down shortly after 1980.

This means that jacket is a minimum of 37 years old!

Here is a closeup of the adorable brooch that came with the jacket.  I see that one of its previous owners had a similar idea to my own.  To be fair, the jacket is black and orange.  I would assume it was originally an Oklahoma State University jacket, but the color scheme is perfect for Halloween use.

I added these two patches myself, because the original patches this jacket had are long gone and I could still see the holes from the stitches.  The patches I used are from a wonderful company called Evil Supply Co. (not a sponsor, I just love their products).  The specific ones I used aren’t available anymore, but they carry other fun ones.

Here is a back view of the jacket and its glorious tails.

As you can see, there are some stains on the jacket.  That’s not terribly surprising.  However, because it is such an old jacket and I have no experience with wool, I am hesitant to try and remove them or take them somewhere to have it done.  I’d rather keep them and let it be part of the costume.

Additionally, and unfortunately, the jacket is missing one lone button.  Two are missing in this photo, but one of them is safely inside the breast pocket.  The other was missing when I bought it.  After a lot of debate and the decision that I won’t be able to find one “statement button” that I like to replace the missing one, I am going to replace the whole row with new ones.  They all need new thread regardless.

I found a band uniform supply site that looks promising, however they don’t carry tarnished buttons and I will have to purchase a shiny gold instead.  I may be able to buff them down somewhat to match the riveted ones I can’t replace.

And there you have it!  This is a work in progress, and once I finish it I will make another blog post about it.  Hopefully that will happen before Halloween.

There are some other elements going into this Creepy Ringleader costume that I need to toy with before they’re final, so please let me know if you are interested in hearing about them as well!