Homemade Halloween Costumes 2012

We went with a literary theme this year: Charlotte's Web.  After deciding my daughter would be a pig, I was suggested Charlotte's Web & the idea for my costume was born.  My daughter's costume was pretty easy to make.  Meet Wilbur:

Just sew a pair of shorts that looked ham-hockish, sew felt ears in place on the hoodie (hoodie from Walmart, but it is sold out...here is a similar one), sew a felt tail with a pipe cleaner inside to shape, and add pink tights (from We Love Colors), a shirt, and shoes.  The ears & tail can be removed to use the hoodie on normal occasions as well.  I bought pink face paint but she HATES anyone touching her face.  So that was a no-go.

I posted about the shorts already, but here is the recap.  I decided to follow homemade by jill's advice and used the puppet show shorts pattern by Oliver + S.  I have only sewn three patterned items before, but this one was pretty easy and they fit pretty well.  They are too big in the hips, but my daughter is 20% in weight and will only eat cheese.  And crackers.  So I knew they would be slightly big.  They stayed on her though, which was so wonderful.

For my Charlotte's Web costume, complete with Charlotte, I followed a few different examples.  I made my shirt by printing out a picture of this costume's embroidery pattern:

and then tracing it onto my own white shirt.  It turned out great:

Then I made the spider web skirt by simply tying white yarn together to make a web pattern and layed that over a black skirt from goodwill.  I got the idea from this picture (you can't buy this at Grandin Road anymore).

I can use the skirt again without the yarn because it isn't glued down or sewn into the skirt.  It made the web move when I walked.

Finally, I decided (at the last minute) to crochet a hat and tried this pattern (she made a hybrid of two hats that she liked).

I know for sure that I followed the patterns exactly, but must have used the wrong yarn because my hat didn't fit, was too large around, and too shallow.

It had no elasticity to stretch around my head and felt like a beanie.  The picture doesn't look like a beanie!  I put a plastic spider on top of the hat to complete the look, and wore orange knee high socks with black spider webs on them.

Happy Halloween!

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