A Return to Hammerspace for the Annual Workshop!
This year, we returned to Hammerspace Workshop in Kansas City, Missouri to host our annual pre-Halloween workshop. This was another fantastic year to partner with Hammerspace Workshop. Thank you so much to Dave Dalton and everyone else at Hammerspace for making us feel so welcome.
We worked on 7 different wheelchair costumes at the event, with about 30 volunteers that showed up to lend a hand. Here is a breakdown of each costume. Thank you to all the volunteers for making this day such a success.
We worked on 7 different wheelchair costumes at the event, with about 30 volunteers that showed up to lend a hand. Here is a breakdown of each costume. Thank you to all the volunteers for making this day such a success.
The Blackhawk Helicopter
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Our first costume project was for a little 8-year-old girl in Hawaii named Scharleen. She lives on a military base and her father works with Blackhawk helicopter pilots. So of course, she wanted to pilot her own Blackhawk helicopter.
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Wreck-It Ralph - Vanellope's Racer
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The second costume was for Leighton. She not only wanted to have a fun Halloween, but also an amazing birthday since it is October 31st too! The whole family was planning to go as "Wreck-It Ralph" characters.
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BB-8
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It's hard to resist the break out hit droid from the latest Star Wars trilogy of films. BB-8 is just such a cute, fun character that it's not surprising kids want their wheelchair turned into him. Well, Evan is planning a trip on a Disney Star Wars Cruise and wanted to roll around the ship as BB-8. His uncle had posted on social media that he wanted someone to help build the costume. Well, Brian Herring, the puppeteer who made BB-8 come to life in the films, saw the post and brought it to our attention saying that Walkin' & Rollin' Costumes could help. We worked with Chris Rude, who built the wheel covers in his home before shipping them to us to finish in the workshop. The rest is history.
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Spider-Glitter Myer
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Myer came up with an original spiderverse character for her wheelchair costume. She created Spider-Glitter Myer which features a pink, silver and white suit, a flying chariot for her to ride in, and that the character shoots pink-glitter webbing. So this was a fun costume because we had much more flexibility on what it looked like. The builders did a great job working off sketches.
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2 Star Wars Sisters
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These two sisters, 7 and 9 years old, were going to Walt Disney World for their Make-A-Wish in December. So they were hoping to take these costumes with them. The original sketch designs showed how the costumes would look, and then we got the final measurements from Disney as to what the maximum size of costume they would allow into the parks. 36" x 52" was the max. This greatly changed the overall look of the costume since both designs were much longer than 52". So we drew a blue box on the floor with tape, set the wheelchairs in it and knew that the costume could not go outside of the tape box. The wheelchairs themselves took up about 80% of the box, so we squeezed everything into the required size so the girls could enjoy them at WDW.
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The Greatest Showman
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Our final costume build was for a little girl who LOVED the movie, "The Greatest Showman." She especially loved the music. So this team of builders created a circus themed costume with lights, and of course, the entire soundtrack to the movie blasting out of it.
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Now I'm sure that many of you would like to see the completed costumes of the 7 we worked on at the 2019 Annual Workshop. Here are the final photos of the 7 costumes we built in this workshop:
Our annual pre-Halloween workshop is held on a weekend in September. We always announce it early on our website and social media, so be sure and follow us on Facebook and Twitter and check back on our Events page of our website to see when the next workshop is scheduled. It's a free event that anyone can attend, at any age so be sure and stop by our next workshop. You might be surprised how fun it is. We will also announce new workshops being scheduled at different times of the year as well.