Gene Simmons Destroyer Costume

Step 7 The Codpiece (or, Cod of Thunder)

Compared to the armor, the codpiece was fairly simple. I picked up a half yard of black vinyl fabric for a couple of bucks at Walmart. I made a pattern by taking a pair of my son’s tighty-whiteys (folded lengthwise down the middle of the fly area), placing the fold of the undies onto the fold in a piece of newspaper, and tracing the curve of the crotch and the front half of the leg hole. I closed up the tracing by hand, then cut the resulting butterfly shape out of the vinyl, sewed up the crotch seam and hemmed the leg hole, making a little pouch.
I cut a five inch wide belt out of the vinyl, about ten inches longer than my son’s waist measurement, sewed the pouch to the bottom center of the belt and hemmed the edges.
I then cut a four-inch circle of heavy cardstock for the codpiece medallion, Gooped it to a six-inch circle of vinyl, turned the edges under and Gooped them down to the back of the circle. (TIP: When sewing or covering things with heavy fabrics like vinyl, use scissors to snip the fabric every half inch or so perpendicular to any curved seams or fold lines. Snip almost but not quite all the way up to the seam line. This will result in much smoother curves when the seam or fold is finished.)
When the glue dried, I used a sewing awl to sew the circle to the center front of the codpiece belt, with about two inches of the circle above the beltline. Even though I only really needed to sew the bottom half of the circle to the belt, I sewed all the way around the circle to give it a more finished look.
Then I measured the belt to just short of my son’s waist measurement, folded the excess length to the inside, and sewed a seam about a half inch back from the fold, making a little doubled-over tab on each side of the belt. Using a leather punch, I punched five holes in each tab and installed black metal grommets in the holes so that the codpiece could lace up in the back with a black shoelace (if you’re not feeling grommetty, Velcro would also work). The excess vinyl was cut off of one side, but left on the other side to use as a “tongue” under the lacing.
I then sewed a black elastic strap I had salvaged from the shoulder pads to the bottom point of the crotch. My strap had come with a little slide buckle which had been riveted onto the shoulder pads, so I just put the codpiece onto my son, marked the bottom center of the tongue in the lace opening, and riveted the buckle to the tongue. This made an adjustable crotch strap to help hold the codpiece in place.

To add the studs, I simply marked the pattern of studs I wanted onto the back side of the vinyl and poked through my marks with a quilter’s thumbtack. I turned the codpiece over to the front side and poked quilter’s thumbtacks through all the little holes I had made, then flipped it back over and carefully hammered the thumbtack points over flat to secure them to the codpiece, using a phone book underneath to cushion the tack heads. I did break off a few points in the process and had to try again, but most of the tacks hammered over just fine the first try. I used about 120 tacks altogether to stud the codpiece, but your mileage may vary.
In order to protect the boy’s skin from all of the thumbtack points, I just cut some black felt to line the inside of the codpiece and used Amazing Goop to glue it in place. I figured that the Goop would also help to anchor the tack points into the codpiece so the “studs” wouldn’t fall out, and it seems to have worked. The Cod of Thunder was complete.