A FAQ: How do you make so many costumes?

Today’s question is…
How do I have time/money to make so many costumes?
I get asked this a lot. It’s something I don’t answer very often because, well, it’s a slightly complicated answer.

The money part of the question is the easiest to answer though, so I’ll start with that! Here’s my bag of tricks to save money making costumes.

1. COUPONS & SALES
I hardly ever buy fabric if I don’t have at least a 40% off coupon in my hand. Both Hancocks (RIP) and Joanns regularly put out good coupons, sign up for their sales fliers! My mom also gets their fliers and gives me the coupons if she’s not going to use them. If you have a smartphone, Joann’s has an app that regularly has 40 or 50% off coupons in it. One of the group costumes I’m doing this year involves a lot of yardage of some slightly expensive fabric – we all waited til we had coupons, and instead of spending $80 a piece, we each spent about $40. I never buy patterns unless they are on sale – if anybody has Simplicity patterns for 99 cents, I go in and buy as many as they let me, whatever I think I might need, so that I don’t have to go back in and pay $17 for one pattern.

2. RE-USING PIECES/FABRIC
Since I do have so many costumes, I’m at a point where I do have a lot of pieces available to re-use. Also, I have a LOT of fabric scraps, which means if I need 1/4 yd of white cotton to make a collar, I don’t have to go buy it, because I’ve probably got some scrap of white cotton in my fabric bins.
For instance, my Wasp costume I’m currently working on. The only thing I had to buy for it was a wig, and eyelets for the back. To break it down:
The black fabric I already had for another costume, the yellow spandex was leftover scraps. The tights I already had from another project I never finished, the gloves and boots are from another costume. All in all I spent about $40 on the costume, and most of that is the wig.
Another example is my classic Ms Marvel suit (the red one.) – The only thing I bought for it was the red spandex. The rest of the fabric was leftover scraps, and the gloves, boots, wig and mask were from my previous Ms Marvel costume. I think I spent about $20 on the costume.

If I’ve spent a good bit of money on something, I will find ways to reuse it. For instance, my Belldandy wig was, at the time, my most expensive wig, so I did a second Belldandy costume so I could reuse it. I did my white Utena costume to reuse the white platform boots (and my Utena wig!) I’d bought for another costume.
When I am thinking of costumes I want to do, I think of things I already have. It does play a role in the costumes I choose to do. If I’m deciding between two costumes and I already have a wig that will work for one of them, then that is probably the one I will pick.

3. BUDGET BUDGET BUDGET
I plan out my costumes a year in advance. At the beginning of the year I sit down and write out a list of what I want to make. I break each of them down into what, on average, I will need to spend on each costume. I usually revise the list about halfway through the year, because sometimes I’ve changed my mind, but I go through the whole process again. I begin buying pieces as things go on sale, or as I find them, or as I have extra money to spend, as early as I can. It’s not always easy and sometimes I do have to drop costumes due to not having the money – I dropped Batgirl last year and I moved her to this year, because she wasn’t working in my budget last year.

Time…?
The time question is a bit more tricky to answer, I think, because it’s more of a personal thing to answer.
I think what it basically boils down to is that, outside of my job, at this point in my life, I don’t have any other responsibilities, and by that I mean, I’m not in school, and I don’t have children. I come home from work and have the whole evening to myself. Sewing is a stress reliever for me (I don’t know HOW something like that is a stress reliever, but it is!), so coming home and popping in a dvd and sewing in my office is something I look forward to all day. It’s not difficult for me to come home from work and spend three hours sewing in my office, or to spend the better part of a saturday cutting patterns. It’s my hobby, it’s what I enjoy doing, so it’s not a pain or something I have to force myself to do, or really even something I have to find the time for!