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Halloween costumes


Trying to decide what to dress up the kids as this year didn't come to me very quickly. I certainly didn't plan to slave for hours over costumes that would probably only be worn once and likely be stained with sticky stuff, mangled, and who knows what. After shooting down the idea of Batman (for my 4 year old girl) and Robin (for my 1 year old boy), I decided to go back to basics and I couldn't resist this costume idea from MarthaStewart.com


I convinced myself that I didn't really have to sew anything and it didn't really look too hard. And it wasn't. I did end up having to make the pilot's cap which could easily be found here due to time and money constraints. I'm not too fond of making up my own patterns for things so I searched high and low for a free pattern download for this very basic cap and came up with nothing. But somehow, I managed to make my own pattern in two different sizes even. And, it came out great (aside from the dreaded trip to Joann's which always ends up making me feel like going postal; standing in line to cut fabric for 20 minutes with people who can't keep track of what number they are on despite the gigantic digital screen. They've also never heard of ribbing or fusible vinyl [nothing to do with this project], anyway).


All the materials and instructions are on the Martha Stewart site so I won't rehash any of that. I don't particularly like hot gluing anything as it is my experience that nothing ever stays glued on. The felt comb on the hat has stayed on well though, and I only severely burned by finger once. The gloves on the sneakers, not so much as my "monkey pants" is no twinkle toes to say the least. So I used a piece of yellow duck tape on top of all the folds at the back of heel to hold everything down and it worked beautifully. The feathers are a bit of a pain to tack on by hand but it's doable especially if you're sitting in front of the TV while doing it. I didn't find a white leotard so I tried to bleach a pink one white but settled for pale pink. For the little suit, I used a long sleeve onesie. And that's about it. I dressed up as farmer girl to complement my little chick that I have to carry around with me most of the time.
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