Happy Halloween, Boo!

So I pulled a near all-nighter last night trying to get Liam's Halloween costume done in time for him to wear it to school today. Yup. Procrastinated. Thought that maybe if I put it off long enough I'd forget that November is coming. Ok...really, I've just had so many other things going on that making costumes was one of the last things on the list to do. Bigger fish to fry, is what I keep telling my hubby. But you always have bigger fish, says he. Yeah, but some fish are bigger. So I catch them, fry them up, and eat them. I throw the smaller ones back. Eventually they grow into bigger fish. Then I do it all over again. Very much like the mythological fella that pushes the rock up the hill every day. Can't remember his name. Something about sleep deprivation. So yes...there are always fish. Particularly since those smaller fish left in the pond always seem to be procreating. And no, you can't overfish the pond. The fish procreate to quickly, and I'm not so good at catching fish anyway. Worms, Roxanne, worms.

Anyway, I bought goodies yesterday for the costumes and set about trying to figure out how I was going to put it together. Part of me was hoping to find a pattern online or in the craft store that I liked, but that was a no go. Once I found their knockoff suede fabrics though, inspiration hit. I chose a few yards of dark brown faux suede and an embroidered faux suede along with a few packs of feathers. I already had some large beads and felt in my stuff at home that I knew I could use. I didn't have enough time to get as elaborate as I really wanted to get, but for a costume that they were going to wear for a couple of hours, they really turned out pretty well, I think.


I took a pair of Liam's chinos and a long sleeve tee and used it to trace roughly for the sizes of the pieces while giving some extra fabric for selvedge and for fringe on the outsides of the pants and under the sleeves. I used the patterned suede to make the loin cloth and then used the brown suede to make fabric ties. The pants have just a drawstring in them (no elastic, didn't have time), but that seemed to work ok. When I made Liam's, I actually did set in sleeves (why, oh, why did I do that...), because his shirt that I traced from had them and I wasn't thinking of drop shoulders. Dumb. You can believe I didn't repeat that mistake on Jonah's. Hence the boxier fit. I made Liam's pants like pajama bottoms. To do the fringe on the outsides, I sewed those side seams on the right side of the fabric, and then I cut the fringe from the fabric outside the seam. Jonah didn't get pants because I ran out of time, but he didn't seem to mind. The tan cords seemed to work pretty well in lieu.

For Liam's headdress, I took a felt strip, hot glued feathers in it and then folded up the felt over the quills to make a felt sandwich. I cut out circles and hot glued the white feathers between two on each side and then hot glued it to the corners of the main headdress. I strung wooden beads on a piece of pipecleaner for stability and then glued the strip onto the headband to cover the end of the top of the felt. I had a small piece of elastic and I sewed it to the ends of the felt strip to make a full band. Jonah's headband was a piece of the embroidered fabric folded and zigzagged to make the band, and then I hot glued the feathers in the back of it and covered the quills over with a piece of felt. The loin pieces were simply rectangles that were hemmed around 3 sides with zigzag and then the top was folded over and stitched leaving enough room to thread through one of the fabric ties. Liams necklace was a heart-shaped piece of index card with hot glue reinforced holes punched for the yarn tie. I hot glued the feathers to it and anchored it all by glueing a diamond-shaped piece of felt to it.


Overall, I probably spent more thand I would have if I'd just bought a cheapie costume on clearance yesterday, but I think they turned out pretty well....and I got to craft, so you know, two birds and the such. Someone else we all know and love was supposed to be a banana, but she went and grew out of her costume. She heard it was a bunting and she didn't like the idea of being without use of lower limbs for more than 2 seconds. So we ended up borrowing this costume from friends (and some war paint). She was very true to the costume and flitted about from halloween basket to halloween basket just like a little bee (hmm, any candy for me? she says)

Hope you had a great Halloween!