Halloween Costumes 2011

Here they are!  I can’t believe they are finished a week in advance.  That hasn’t happened before.  But it is a great feeling because I have so many other things I need to be doing and these are the most handmade costumes I have done..except for Audrey’s little strawberry costume last year which was a nice attempt but didn’t turn out like my vision of it.

I finished Josiah’s late last night and was so thrilled.  I had gotten the idea from Martha Stewart but after looking at her pattern it wasn’t at all like I thought it would be.  I had assumed I’d be making it like her other cape tutorials (like I used for Audrey’s) but they did it in a non-sewing way.  It actually looked harder to me and used a lot more materials.  And since to print out her pattern would have used 22 sheets of paper, I just made it up myself.  I used a piece of yarn and my disappearing ink pen to make a compass to make the circle for the cape.  I cut out a quarter of the circle and made a smaller circle for the neckline.  I made a collar to match the neckline, sewed it all up and voila!  A CAPE!  I was amazed at myself that I made Josiah’s costume from start to finish in about 2-2.5 hours total, including the hat.

Audrey’s hood alone took me that long or more because I couldn’t figure out what in the world Martha’s instructions were telling me to do.  Her cape was as simple as they come but I finally realized that the hood instructions are lacking the pictures that were originally with it when it was published in the magazine.  So, they are very cryptic.  If anyone needs help deciphering them let me know.  I had to figure it all out using paper first so I didn’t ruin my fabric.  And thankfully I did that because I totally thought they were wanting me to fold and cut it a different way at first.  I also didn’t like how they wanted me to put the hood together because it would leave the unfinished seams showing in the hood.  I noticed that when it was almost too late, but was able to sew it so the edges are hidden.  But if I had realized what they were doing from the beginning I would have sewn the pieces of fabric together differently to give an even more professional look.  oh well.  No one will notice or care but me.

I am excited about how Josiah’s hat came out.  On Martha’s site they have two fitted baseball caps glued on top of each other.  But I couldn’t find any brown hats at all until I thought to try Dollar General and they had two khaki ones.  They had those velcro straps on the back to alter the size though so I cut off the back half of each hat and sewed them together.  I kept resewing the hat smaller and smaller until it fit Josiah’s small head.  I cut the brims and hot glued bias tape on them.  The glue job isn’t perfect but it’s good enough.  Then I just sewed the little flaps and hand sewed them inside each side of the hat, added a bit of hot glue behind them on the outside for added strength and tied them together on top.  That is the same bias tape on top, I just sewed it in half to make it thinner.

I found Audrey’s little basket at Goodwill yesterday for 99 cents.  I just cut an extra piece of red fabric to lay in it.  She loved that basket and didn’t want to put it down.  I love that it is small and she won’t be able to accumulate much candy in it!

Josiah’s shirt is the same one we used to make him a hobbit.  It is just a white dress shirt.  The khakis are ones he already had too.  Audrey’s dress is the vintage one I showed you that I got from a little shop on Etsy.

I think my favorite part of her outfit is the ribbon I sewed around the edge of the cape.  I was afraid that my machine would growl at me and give me a hard time going through all that fabric but it worked perfectly and didn’t give me any trouble.  I wanted to hug my machine for its compliance with both of these projects.  They couldn’t have gone as fast as they did without its cooperation.