Spats is where it's at.

Megacon is coming up this weekend and my roommate and I are going to dress up as steam punk green lanterns. I basically don't have any piece of the costume, so I am making all of it either from scratch or doing some major reconstruction on things I already have. For the first project, I made spats to go over some victorian style ankle-high boot heals. 

Since my costume will be mainly green and black, I wanted the spats to be a different color that would stand out, so I got half a yard of dark gray cotton material and 16 black flat top buttons (8 for each spat). 

I won't go into detail on how I made them, but I roughly followed this video tutorial.  I only discovered this website recently, and I kind of love it.

 

 front view

 side view

 

button and button hole (unclosed)

 

 button in button hole

 elastic band on bottom, used to secure to shoe

 laid out flat, unbuttoned

My parents got me a Janome DC2010 a while ago, and while I have been using it, I have yet to go to any of the sewing classes offered for the machine, or even really looked up how to use it. However, since I needed to make button holes for the spats, I decided to look up A) what a button hole foot looks like (yeah, I've never used one before - shame on me) and B) how to use it.

Can I just say... IT BLEW MY EFFING MIND! The Janome DC2010 has a special button foot that has a slot where you place the button, and a little sensor automatically tells the machine what size to make the button hole. And then you just select one of three different button hole options, place the foot on the material accordingly, and push down on the pedal. Don't worry about guiding the material because it freaking does it for you, and it stops sewing once the button hole is complete! And it makes a perfect button hole EVERY TIME. I'm not kidding you. I was blown away. I am in love with this machine. I can't wait to see what other magical things it has to offer.

Project: Spats
Time: I didn't do it straight from start to finish, but probably a couple of hours.
Things I did right: Watched the tutorial all the way through multiple times; measured everything a billion times and made marks when necessary; ironed the fabric about a billion times and tried it on with pretty much each button to make sure it fit.
Things I didn't do that I probably should have: Made a pattern instead of just cutting away; pinned the material pieces when applicable; used some sort of backing to make the cotton stand up nicer.
Cost: 0.5 yards of gray cotton @ 5.99/yd = $3
         4 packs of 4 buttons @ 1.75 each = $7
         gray and black thread (already owned it) = $0
         about 1.25 inches of elastic (already owned it) = $0
         Total = $10 + tax
Tools used: Sewing machine - regular foot and button hole foot; seam ripper; hand needle and thread; marker with disappearing ink; iron and ironing board; measuring tape; scissors.
Difficulty: easy