Rat King Costume Crafting!

YAAAAY so if you couldn't guess by everything about me, Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love horror, ghouls, costumes, crafting, um, other things...

ALSO this was my first Halloween NOT being long distance with my girlfriend, Mya. We started dating early 2021 and then moved to opposite coasts, so I was QUITE excited to get to do a couple's costume. There was much brainstorming about options, but being quite passionate about rats we landed on a rat king.

If you're unfamiliar, rat kings are groups of rats that get their tails tangled together, forming strange little nets of rats. We planned to dress as two rats and then tie our tails together.

I got to sketching and planned out a design for rat tails made of thrifted pink t-shirts. We collected the materials, divvied up strips of fabric and got to work.

I started by laying out my fabric in length order and reorganizing the sections to make a semi-random pattern. I laid each flat and sewed the sections together, slowly increasing in size. I'd randomly face the seams inside and out to give it a patchworky, scrappy look.

I was worried about the shape of the tip and filling the pointed bit with stuffing. I basically cutting out a weird cone shape and stitched it up, careful to make it roughly line up with the rest of the tail's size.

I added a button hole to attach to the buttons on the cuff of my blazer so I could move my tail with my arm and keep it from dragging on the ground. The tail ended up being too heavy to be held by the button, but I just stuck a safety pin through there to attach it to my sleeve.

I stitched the whole thing together and stuffed it. The stuffing surprisingly took hours. Definitely because I was being a bit ridiculous with it and carefully plucked and fluffed up each tiny bit of stuffing before placing it inside. Several times I pulled stuffing out to do it over again and get the exact look I was going for. It was fine though I watched some great horror movies. I got the tail stuffed to a nice squishy state, stitched up the top panel and added a couple belt loops so I could attach it to me.

There's some point in this process where I began questioning if I was making a fursuit or kemonomimi of some sort. Tbh this is the only kind of fursuit I could possibly afford.

I dug up my little buddy, Ratatouille's monster, to safety pin to my shoulder and add another little friend to our rat king :)

At this point I started working out the head piece. I needed something that:

A) tells you I'm a rat.

B) has a crown, telling you I'm a rat KING.

C) accommodates my glasses

D) can fit a small pair of noise cancelling headphones, or can be removed to put them on. If I'm going out in this costume, I need a way to adapt it to my sensory needs.

E) can easily be taken off and stored if I don't want it on my head anymore. I tend to get annoyed by visors.

I sketched up a plan and got to work assembling my head with tape and hot glue. I made a prototype with thinner cardboard before doing the real one.

I cut panels for the side of the face, center/top, and ears. I made a loop sized to my head that would keep it on in a comfortable place.

I cut out sections of the ears to make them a bit more 3D. I also thinned out the center section of the headpiece to make the nose more pointed. I cut out eyes and a nose and hot glued them on. For the eyes, I used duck tape to color them and give them a glossy look. I added little eye shines with white duck tape.

I also added ribbon to secure the headpiece to my head, and so I could tie it around my arm and wear the headpiece like an epaulet if I wanted to take it off.

The time for the crown was upon us. I went with a scrappy wire look, using thicker wire to make the outline of a six pointed crown. I used wire to secure the crown to the headpiece by just poking holes in the cardboard and feeding it through. I added little mirrors to the crown in place of gems, wrapping them in smaller gauge wire and entwining them with the crown.

At this point I was about done but didn't want to be so just started adding random details. I painted the ears and nose pink, painted the center section brown to match the sides, and even fashioned bendy whiskers out of wire (also secured by poking holes through the cardboard).

When I ran out of things to make, I made pink fingerless gloves out of scraps left over from the tail. I made a Tiktok showing the process too. I just wanted to make more stuff.

@ant1her0comp1ex

make something idk

♬ original sound - Rayden 🧿 He/Him

I still wanna make more stuff, I've been particularly crafty recently. I love making Halloween costumes it's such a fun yearly ritual. Always gets me in the mood to be artsy and do creative problem solving and make stuff with my hands.

Anyways, here's the carnage. It's since been cleaned up. It's beautiful to me though.

Lastly I assembled my costume. I wore basically what I'd wear ordinarily but thrifted a new blazer and tie. It's been a while since I've tied a tie -- I ordinarily tie them once and then just slip them on and off for the rest of time.

Here's me and Mya all dressed up, post-outing! She made her mask cover her face because she was traveling to visit friends for Halloweekend and wanted to surprise them at Halloween parties :)

She was out of town on Halloween itself, so I went to a drive-in movie marathon! More on this event to come. I took some pictures in costume after the car all-nighter in which I watched 5 movies in one night. And yet I remain incredibly charming.

Happy Halloween! It may be nearly December, but Halloween can be whenever you want. It's a state of mind or something like that. Keep crafting, keep dressing up in ways that make you happy, keep watching horror movies and doing things you love. Stay spooky :)