#armsocks

All right. We’re going to assemble the gear. All of this is pretty standard for this kind of project:

Tights: I use welovecolors opaque nylon-lycra solid tights. They come in a standard and a plus size. A good guide is to get whatever size you’d wear on your legs. If it absolutely has to be opaque (if you have skin that’s darker than your character, for example), try the microfiber tights, but the foot shape at the bottom makes it harder. Welovecolors’ light gray tights match Cadaver Grey Ben Nye and light gray Snazaroo. Their dark gray is too blue to match the dark gray Snazaroo.

Fingernails: For these, I used the Sally Hansen “Real Short” nails. Get whatever works for your character/costume. Back when I was mass-producing these, I’d get big boxes of assorted nails in whatever shape was cheapest. The final shape doesn’t matter a whole lot. Don’t use Dollar Tree nails. I’ve tried and never had success, but I have had a lot of times where the nail broke and left a chunk glued to the tights that just wouldn’t come off.

Super Glue: Sometimes this comes with your nail kit. If I ran out, I’d just use normal Super Glue brand. The only one I don’t suggest is the gel or long-cure kind. You use this both to put the nails on and to stop any little runs forming (like the one on my thumb up there).

Thread: Three cones for your serger and then enough for a little bit of hand sewing.

Spray Paint: For your nails. You can use nail polish, but spray paint is faster and looks better, assuming you don’t botch your ombre like I did.

Sticky Tape: To hold the nails down so you can paint them.

Clear Nail Polish: I don’t use this because I have freaky teflon nails that nothing sticks to (including salon gel polish. Flakes right off!), but a lot of people like to paint their nails with this before they do the gluing. It stops the glue from sticking to your nails as badly.

Toolwise, you’ll need a water-erase felt-tip pen, a hand sewing needle and thread wax/conditioner if you use it, scissors, two safety pins, and the aforementioned serger.

Start with your fingernails, since they’ll need time to dry. Put a couple of pieces of tape sticky-side-up on a piece of cardboard or scrap, and line the nails up on it.

Take your nails outside and give them a quick coat of spray paint.

I tried to be fancy and copy these fingernails I found on google, but I did not do a good job of it. Set these aside to cure.

Note: you can pick which nails fit your hand and then just spray those. I did the whole box because I was on autopilot.

Now, take your tights out of the box and lay them down.

I like to leave the tights like this, which makes the final chest seam inside-out. I find this to be a lot more comfortable on my back. If you want all your seams in the same direction, turn the tights inside-out, and then lay them out nice and flat like they are here.

Two of the biggest mistakes I tended to make when I was mass-doing these was losing track of where the fronts/backs of the hands are and what thumb goes where. It’s quite easy to accidentally make two hands. To stop this, I put a safety pin in the back of each hand, with the head of the pin pointing at where the thumb will go.

These have to be far enough down so that I can make the whole glove without removing them, so keep them a minimum of about 6″ from the toe seam.

Now, place your four fingers over the end of the tights, and mark where your bottoms of your fingers are.

It looks more real for the fingers to be slightly too long, instead of too short, but aim for them to be spot on.

Then draw lines from those dots to the seam of the tights.

You want to divide the tip of the tight almost evenly into four fingers. You need to give your index finger just a little bit more room than the other three. Don’t worry about your thumb. We’ll do the thumb later.

You can see that my lines are wavy. Try to keep them straighter than this.

Back in the olde days, I had templates on index cards that fit a huge variety of hand sizes, but they swam over the rainbow hilighter bridge to the great office supply store in the sky.

Now, cut off your toe seams. If you leave these on, they get in the way later.

Don’t cut your fingers. We’re going to make the serger do that for us.

So line your serger blade up with the line you marked on a finger, and start serging down that line. The serger will cut the finger and seam up one side of that cut.

When you get to the point where the next cut of your serger blade will cut the very bottom of your marking line, stop. Set your serger blade to “lock”. My serger locks the blade in the down position. If yours locks it in the up position, make sure that last cut has been made before you lock it.

On the right side of this image, you can see the other half of the finger that teh serger just cut.

Here’s where the magic happens. Take the part of the finger than your serger cut. Pull it straight forward, so that it’s in the line that your machine will be serging.

Very carefully, start serging. You’ll have to watch to make sure that the edge gets caught by the needle all the way through the seam. Also, since your blade is locked, you’ll need to make sure you’re not feeding too wide of a seam allowance into your serger. Keep going until you’re back at the top edge of the tights.

So now you have this. One seam that goes down the side of one finger and up the side of the finger next to it.

The very bottom of the fingers is prone to a little running. Be careful with that point until you’re ready to fuse those runs with glue.

Just repeat that process until you run out of fingers. It should be three seams for each hand.

Thumb time!

These thumbs are too small. Make yours wider and longer, but put them in the same spot.

It is extremely important that the tip of your thumb starts below the bottom of your index finger. I know that on your hand, the tip of your thumb reaches up above the start of your index finger, but if you have the tip of your thumb go up that high, you won’t have enough space to get your index finger in the gloves, and then you’ll have to sew a big stretch-lame ring on it and sell it as “Eridan gloves” and no one wants that.

This thumb goes almost too high. The extra room we gave the index finger when we started will help us out, though, so it’ll be fine.

And yeah, the index finger looks weird, and that’s okay.

If your thread didn’t catch and you end up with a hole, don’t try to fix it with the serger. It’s not precise enough for that. Just remember where it is, and remember to sew it up later when you’re doing the fingertips.

Now, on the front of the hand (which you can tell from my safety pin happily there, mark from the middle of the palm to roughly the middle of the forearm.

Fold the glove so that the front of the hand is on the fold, and chop off a bit in the front of the hand. You’ll have to take out the safety pin to do it.

How much? I usually do about 3/4″ at the deepest point. The deepest point should be about 1.25″ below the bottom of the thumb.

However, as you’ll see at the end, I have normal-sized hands and fairy-sized wrists, so I had to go back and cut off another bit to get them to fit me there.

Now, take your hand and place it over the glove. Mark where the ends of your fingers are.

Chop those ends off. Grab your scissors and round off the very tips of all of the fingers.

Your thumb will end in a very sharp point. Cut the end of that point off to dull it down.

Take your needle and whip-stitch the very ends of the fingers closed.

We do this for two reasons: 1) I did over 100 pairs of these and I never found a machine method that was as accurate and any faster and 2) you get a little more flexibility with the hand sewing. You want that on your very fingertips.

Cut a hole in the crotch because you’re about to stick your head in it.

This hole only needs to be big enough for you to get your entire head through. You’ll be able to make it bigger later.

Put your gloves on inside-out. Take your super glue and dot off any little runs that you see forming. Stop them before they grow.

We put the gloves on inside-out for two reasons: first, the flatlock stitches are designed to flatten, and this helps get them started. Second, it’s really hard to turn the fingers inside-out unless you start by putting your fingers in them and then pulling the gloves off.

So, go ahead and turn them inside-out.

Now is a good time to put a few coats of clear nail polish on your nails, and to make sure your fake nails are all dry and ready for glue.

Putting the nails on is a two-hand process, so I’m going to apologise for the pictures in advance.

You’re going to do one nail at a time. Start by putting the glove on the hand that’s going to get the nails. Keep your other hand free.

Put glue on the fake nail. Make sure to get to the very edges, or you start getting some really unsettling nail-peel problems. Don’t use too much glue. You can add more really easily, but it’s not easy to remove a stuck nail from your hand without breaking it.

Press the nail onto the tights, over your natural nail. Press down and rub. If you do this right, the nail will stay onto the tights, but the motion you make rubbing the nail will stop the tights from being able to bond to your natural nail.

Then pull on the edge of the tights, right by the ‘cuticle’ of the fake nail. This should pop the nail off your finger.

If you don’t have Super Magic Teflon Nails™, that good coat of clear nail polish you put on your fingers should stick to the glue and peel off your fingernail, helping release it from your finger.

This is honestly the least enjoyable part about making these things.

Now these look absolutely fake right now. This picture’s from before I tightened up the wrists to match my super tiny ones, and all the excess fabric is showing.

Once that’s been tightened up, they start fitting much more tightly, and those drag lines go away.

See that run on my thumb? Remember when I said to catch those the second you see them and top off the end with super glue to make them stop running? That’s what happens when you don’t do that. Look at Aeryn’s face on the screen there. She does not approve of that run. Don’t disappoint Officer Aeryn Sun.

Anyhow, now that you’ve sealed up your final little snags and runs, and refitted the wrists to get rid of the baggy bits, you’re good to go!

Since these tights are made out of nylon, alcohol pigment based inks take very well and last for a while (with extremely careful washing). So, if you’ve got a character with a robot arm or something, you can take some fabric markers or even copic-type markers and get to doodling and shading and/or standing as a model while someone else doodles/shades. Y’all know the rules, swatch test first and all that.

So, there you go, troll tights in under two hours. Not bad. Have fun going out and not worrying about your paint rubbing off on you/your expensive lolita dresses/your friends/your friends’ dogs.