Tag: costume

Making a Peanut

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This year I had a request to turn the smallest (and I really mean smallest, as he was only barely three months old for Halloween) into a peanut for Halloween. Ever up to the challenge, I said yes immediately and then began searching for a pattern.

Did you know there aren’t any peanut costume patterns out there? At least not any good infant ones that I could find. So I looked at the above picture of a previously available costume (which I found on a webpage about creating a Mr. Hankey costume for an infant. The Internet is a truly strange and wonderful place.) and the below pattern and set about making a costume.
Since the little dude is still quite little and this was a blanket pattern, I used the back of the three-month size as a base. I divided it into four columns and then two-inch rows, cutting armholes and drawing a circle for the face.

I cut everything double, and then went back and cut just the front pieces for the face hole. I sewed the columns, then sewed those together around, leaving the front for a zipper to make it easy to get into and out of.

I lined it in muslin and stuffed it a slight bit at the top and bottom, to give it more of a rounded peanut look.

I cut a two inch strip width-wise and the single strip managed to finish off all three holes, single fold.

Then it was on to the zipper. Fleece and zippers don’t mix easily, but I got it in there. Mostly.

The best part is, it fit!

Quick DIY Spider Costume

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Halloween is five days away. If you still need a costume for yourself or a little one, here is my formula for a quick, DIY spider costume. Unfortunately, I didn’t take process pictures, but this seriously went so quickly that I didn’t think about it beforehand.

Materials:

  • Correctly sized T-shirt
  • Long-sleeved shirt that is two-three sizes larger
  • Socks the length of your arms
  • Thread
  • Stuffing
  • Felt (optional)
  • Serger (optional)

Instructions

  1. Serge (or hand-stitch) hems of t-shirt and long-sleeved shirt, making sure the inner shirt is against the right side of the outer shirt. I did right sides together, so the inside of the costume is the outside of the t-shirt. It was unintentional, but it works well if you have shirts with tags to sandwich the tags.
  2. Flip the shirts so the long-sleeved one is on the inside, and whip-stitch the two together at shoulder and under-arm to hold in place.
  3. Stuff between the shirts to create a puffy middle. Hand-stitch the collars of the shirts together, stretching the smaller collar to match the size of the larger collar.
  4. Stuff the socks so they match the length of your arms, or the length you want them to reach. I used a Soffe big boys’ small long-sleeved shirt and Hanes womens’ size 5-9 crew socks and the lengths matched perfectly. If you are making an adult size, you may either need knee-length socks or cut one sock off at the toes and sew it to another sock to get the right length.
  5. Hand-stitch the socks to the sides of the outer shirt, spacing them evenly down the sides.
  6. Take a length of thread, doubled, to connect the arms and tie a knot at the bottom. String through or sew to a small square of felt, or you can sew it to the under side of the bottom sock-arm. Thread it through the first sock, and repeat the process (leaving some space between arms, however much you feel lets it hang appropriately) with the second sock-arm and the underarm seam of the long-sleeve shirt (placing the felt inside the arm if you are using that method). Do this at the middle and end of each side (more places if you are doing a bigger size).

    7. That’s all there is to it. Add some black pants, perhaps a black hat (I’m making one with red felt eyes) and you are a spider.

Getting Things Done

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Is it just me, or does everything seem to pile up at once? You can just be going along with one or two things to do, and then when you plan to do something, twenty other things need to be done at once. That would be how my week is going.

Like I said before, I’m working to really get my Etsy store “open”. Technically, it is open now, but I’m “grand opening” on Sunday. And there is another project I am working on to go with that. So there’s two projects I was planning and working on at a steady pace.

Then, we found out favorite book character day is on Friday. That added another four projects to the list. But it gave me incentive to see if I could knit a five-foot scarf in under a week. (Spoiler alert: I finished in two days. Maybe a whole four hours of work into it?)

I’ve also committed to helping my mom re-open her Etsy Store this week before a major event at her work. And after a major event in her life, but that is her story to tell (and she should, hint hint). So I’ve put off some things for that until I finish this costume, but I’m getting to those, too.

While it can be stressful to have so many things going on at once, I think it helps. It gives that extra push to get things done that sometimes is lacking when you only have one or two things to do.