Mike the Knight handmade costume

Well this year Eli is old enough to have interests, ha ha, so I had to factor in his say (Waaah!). He loves his "shows" on Nick Jr and I've noticed him grab any random sword shaped object lately and go into full lunge yelling "Mike the knight!" He also currently hates putting clothes on so when I was brainstorming for costume ideas this year, it obviously had to be something of interest to him in order to not only get dressed in it, but to most likely be covered from head to toe in costume due to this unpredictable, yet sure-to-be-frigid midwest weather. So then I was like if I made him a "real" sword & shield and a complete costume some accessories to go with it, then he'd surely go for it! I am happy to report that I was right. Yay me! I made his costume over a month ago to test out my theory and it almost didn't even make it until Halloween because every day I heard "I want my Mike the knight sword momma!" and "where's my Mike the knight hat/shield/tunic" (Yes he'd say tunic. It was hilarious). Finally I had to just hide it completely and it only took 3 weeks of asking morning, noon, and night for it, he forgot about it.

In full lunge yelling "I'm Mike the knight!"

His outfit was actually very simple and came together without a hitch (I LOVE it when that happens!) The first thing I did was to google an image to get Mike's exact outfit as a reference and as usual I wanted his costume to be as close as possible. I decided to go with felt instead of fleece because its way cheaper and I managed to find plenty of the perfect color blue felt in the remnant bin at Joanne Fabrics and literally paid like $1.50 for all of it! I used some black thermals for the top and pant "underarmer" part of the costume. 

The costume consisted of gloves, elbow "pads", knee pads, belt, helmet, boot covers and of course, sword and shield. I made the sword out of card board that I cut to shape and then covered with colored masking tape. The shield is also cardboard that I covered in felt and free handed the images for each corner and then used some of the masking tape to finish off the edges and keep everything in place. I made a handle out of black masking tape for the back and secured that in place with a lot of the tan colored tape to cover the rest of the back and have it all blend together.

Then I made the tunic the same way you would a pillow case dress (using 2 rectangle pieces of fabric) except I made a neck and arm holes and cut the back piece so that it would open completely and close with velcro. I again free handed the patch that goes on the front, mimicking the shield but in much smaller, less detailed form, and then glued that puppy on.

The belt and elbow "pads" as you can see in the pic above are just one dimensional shapes (with a buckle design glued in place for the belt). I used velcro for everything. Easy peasy. The knee pads however, are stuffed with a little fiberfill and I added elastic to the backs so that they could slide on up over his knee.

With the gloves I traced his hand and then added about ½ inch all around and sewed the two pieces of felt together to make it glove shaped. I trimmed down the seam allowances as close as I could knowing felt doesn't fray and left them as is. No need to turn them inside out to hide the seams since it served my purpose as they were.

The "boots" actually aren't boots at all (sneaky sneaky sir). I made a little slip-on bootie that I fit over the front part of his shoe and then I pulled his thermal pants down over the rest of the shoe and overlapped them with the slip-on (which is how the cartoon looks. In the pics, I didn't really see the start of his shoe and the end of his pants, they seem to be one piece so that's why I did it the way I did). I added some puffy fabric paint to the bottom of the slip-on piece to give him some traction while walking but in all honesty, they were just mainly a photo prop. As soon as I had all my "modeling" pictures I took them off ;)

As for the hat, it may look like the hardest part but it really was very simple to do as well. I used the same hat link I shared in my post about the Olive Oyl "hair", only I used the kid sized one and didn't bother with the band piece for the bottom since I was going to add the "mask" part to it. (I just needed something to get me started for a basic hat shape that already fit his head and this pattern fit that bill). I free handed the red feather by sewing 2 pieces of felt together, (so it would be a little stiffer and able to stand up) trimmed down the seam allowance to nearly nothing, and inserted that into the top seam of the hat. It's hard to see but I did cut a jagged piece of brown fleece and sewed it hanging down from the front of the hat for Mike's "bangs", ha ha. I traced the general shape of the mask piece onto a piece of paper as a pattern and used it to cut out 2 pieces of felt, sewed them together then turned it right side out. From there I sewed long, skinny rectangles on the the front and cut the centers out to create the final slit look and then just sewed it onto the main hat. Finally I cut a rounded bill shaped piece to hang down the back and sewed that on. It sounds way more complicated then it was, I swear! Estimated cost: $7.50 ($5.00 for the 2 rolls of masking tape, but I will definitely use them for other projects).

You can see the details I've described, including the "bangs" in this pic:

See? No shoe covers. Took them off so he could dance

Overall, felt is defintiely my go-to fabric of choice for costume making because it's just so easy to work with and it doesn't fray. Costume sewing is so liberating because a lot of the rules for sewing clothes can get tossed right out the window since its just to create an illusion and doesn't necessarily have to stand up to wear and tear and be all that functional. Most importantly, it doesn't have to be perfect. Woo hoo! Did I mention he won best homemade costume at his little kids party?? Well he did! He shot his hand up in the air and said "I'm a winner!" Ha ha ha. It was hilarious. As the DJ announced him as a winner he added "and he's a good dancer too, I've seen him." Too funny. Love that kid.

$10 cold stone creamery gift card for winning!

Me and my little knight in shining armor :)

I had so much fun making these costumes. My brain is already in overdrive thinking of a fun family themed costume for next year. I probably won't tell my husband until the day of and just say, "put this on!" like I did this year so he won't fight me on it. Seems to work best that way ;) If you have any ideas, shoot them my way, pleaseandthankyou.

Until next time,
Linds

Handmade infant Staypuft Marshmallow man costume

 We all recognize that guy right? From the Ghostbusters movie??

This one was a doozy for sure! I had a friend ask me if I'd be able to make this for her almost 6 mouth old son and it seemed simple enough so I agreed. However it nearly kicked my butt! But I do love a good sewing challenge so I was very proud of myself that I got through it and didn't have to back out of it because I couldn't figure it out, (which I was thisclose to doing.)

Now she didn't give me any mandatory criteria to include, but there were some things I wanted it to have since I was the mother of a 6 month old once and remember that stage vividly--mainly the frequent diaper changes. First, it needed to be easy on and off and ideally 2 pieces so that diaper changes wouldn't be a hassle, and secondly I needed it to already be stuffed so that she didn't have to put him in it and then stuff it. (I could imagine a 6 month old not tolerating being poked and prodded as mom and dad shoved itchy stuffing inside his costume to get it "just so" and then repeating the process with each on/off for changes Gah! Could you imagine?! She'd get it and be like "um, totally not worth it, but thanks anyways. Right??) Thinking how to do these 2 things proved to be the most difficult part of the whole process. Once I could picture in my mind's eye how to make this happen, the sewing came pretty easy.

The idea is very similar to the Popeye arm's I discussed in my previous post where you cut out 2 of the same pieces and stick inside the other and stuff it. The legs/arm assembly and attachment were very similar to the lycan costume I made last year. It will be too hard to describe all the steps without doing a full on tutorial so click on the links back to those posts to see what I mean if you're at all curious. This is what it looked like on the inside:

From the neck opening, looking in...

from the waist opening looking in...

The bottoms I made just like a pair of pants with an elastic waistband and only stuffed the leg pieces, not the top part. I didn't worry about making that area stuffed because as you can see in the picture above, the poufy elasticized bottom sat on top and covered that area.

Let me just say that I want a costume like this in my size, wait, strike that-- make it jammies to sleep in, because with the stuffing inside, it was so soft and cuddly in there! I'd be asleep in 1.2 seconds if I slept in something like this. Waking up in a pool of sweat would be totally worth it to me ;) 

The hat is just a chef's hat that you can find a tutorial for all over the internet. To make it flat on top though, I cut out a round piece of cardboard and stuck it on the inside. Then just made a little red tassel thingy, glued down a fabric covered button on top and voila! All done.

So over all, I was able to make it 2 pieces, it goes on and comes off fairly easy (the bulk is a little tricky to maneuver around, trying to find baby arms/hands and whatnot but crying stops within 30 minutes, max. Just kidding! Neither baby cried when I tried it on them! Lol) and it's pre-stuffed. I love it! I hope my friend loves it as much as I do.

The handsome little model is my brand new nephew Liam. Isn't he just the munchiest?! Muuuah!

And that's all she wrote folks. Over and out.

-Linds

p.s Tomorrow is Mike the knight.

Handmade adult Popeye and Olive Oyl costumes

Oh my gosh was I excited about this one! My mom and step-dad had a party to go to that was this past weekend and it was out in a barn so she wanted something to stay relatively warm in. (Not to mention, she wasn't too interested in wearing a "sexy" crayon or anything, ha! Costumes these days, they kill me!) My step dad loves cartoon characters and super heroes, and he's a burly/muscled dude so again, I wanted to work with what we had. My mom is a brunette so I thought popeye and olive oil would be perfect (turns out, hair color would be a mute point anyway...you'll see).

Mom's costume was super easy. She already had a black skirt at home just sitting with tags on it in her closet, and boots. The only thing we had to buy was the red top which I snagged at Goodwill, brand-new for $4! Bonus. I added lace to the neckline and wrists using a long stitch length so she could easily remove them if she wanted to wear it again. Same thing with the skirt, using a large zigzag stitch (So it can easily be seam ripped off), I attached the yellow ribbon about 4 inches up from the bottom. For the earrings, I took white rounded buttons I already had on hand and painted them yellow, then attached them to earing studs (again I had those on hand from my Marilyn Monroe costume from last year) and lastly, I decided to make a black hat in the shape of Olive Oyl's signature 'do using this fleece hat pattern in adult size, omitting the ear flaps and adding a "pony tail" piece stuffed with fiberfill to the back seam. I then just wrapped ribbon around it Voila! Estimated cost: $4

What a good sport! I had her contorting in all sorts of weird "Olive Oyl poses" ha ha

As for Terry's costume, He gave me a dark blue T-shirt that fit him well, and I just added the Popeye details to it. I used 2 thrifted red t-shirts to make the red collar then added black ribbon to that. I looked to this tutorial to help guide me in the shape (I attached it to the t-shirt sewing only along the back piece of the shirt and velcroed the front pieces of the red collar together so that it could still fit over his head. I worried that if I sewed all the way around the collar, I'd lose the stretch and he wouldn't be able to fit it over his large noggin, or "dome piece", as Aldo calls it) I used some scrap blue knit I had for the sleeve cuffs, and again painted some white rounded buttons yellow and hot glued them down the front. I already had the sailor hat from a Halloween costume years ago and he just wore his regular jeans and boots. I found a random wood piece shaped like a pipe and glued it to the end of a paint brush handle for pop eye's pipe. (Hey, where there's a will, there's a way!) As for the arms, I made them very similarly to Eli's popeye arms except these were made as sleeves to slip on, not attached to the shirt like Eli's. I based it off of Terry's wrist to elbow measurement, adding about 7inches of "sleeve" length to the top, and also got his bicep measurement where the sleeve would end. Then it's really 2 triangle shaped pieces (with bottom short end being a few inches larger than wrist measurement, and top long edge being bicep measurement) sewn right sides together to get a cylinder shape, with one stuffed inside the other wrong sides facing together (see pics below if this is confusing). 

Before stuffing the forearm, I made a casing at the bottom of the 2 layers so I could add some elastic (cut elastic sized to actual wrist measurement). Once that part was done I stuffed fiberfill in-between the layers of the cylinder until it started to resemble pop eye's arm. I only filled half way and the rest I left empty so it would slide over the arm and rest on the bicep. (I serged the bicep end shut to allow for stretch over the arm and to keep the stuffing in. You can do a zigzag stitch too if needed, just not a straight stitch or the thread will break when you try to stretch it over the bicep). All done! Estimated cost: Free (had everything on hand).What do you think??

These two are good at humoring me for my photos

Here they are together:

Recognize that spinach can from Eli's costume last year? ;)

One of my faves!

Best Popeye and Olive Oyl I've ever seen! (If I do say so myself). I loved how they totally got into character, ha ha ha!

Tomorrow I'll show you how I did my infant Staypuft costume:

Hellooooo HANDsome!

Lator gators,
Linds

Sandy and Danny Halloween Costume

**Tap, tap, tap** This thing on?? Hey there strangers! Sorry, I've been on a bit of a hiatus from blogging. I blame joining Instagram. Ever since I've joined, anything I would have blogged about I've just posted a pic or video with an explanation on instagram and then blogging got shoved to the back burner :/

Well, my favorite time of the year to sew is here, Halloween! I just love making costumes and getting as literal with them as I can. This year Aaron and I went as Danny and Sandy from Grease:

   

These were the pictures I used for inspiration. I wanted to keep costs down and we didn't already have a leather coat so I went with the Letterman sweater for Aaron. He was out of town the whole week prior to the party we had this past Saturday and so when he came home I just said "put this on, we're going as Sandy and Danny from Grease!" Ha ha. He had no choice. (He actually couldn't even remember who these characters were! Don't worry, I kicked him for you.) He already had the black shoes, tee, and pants. I just hemmed his pants a little short so his white socks would show like in the movie. I bought the cream colored cardigan in the women's section at walmart (ha!) for $13, added a large red "R" with felt, and cut some t-shirt strips for the red stripes on the arm. I didn't luck out with Goodwill trying to find the sweater. Talk about bummer, but for a total of $13 for his whole costume, I sucked it up ;) I present to you my very own Danny Zuko!

As for my costume, it needed to be a little more precise since her outfit is what everyone remembers. I did not own a pair of leather pants (gasp!) or an off the shoulder top, or a leather jacket. Sheesh. If you know me, I pride myself in making/buying our costumes for as cheap as possible so I was a little worried if I would even be able to pull it off. The reason I even chose this idea for our costumes is to obviously work with what we already had going for us: me being a blonde with the appropriate length hair and him being brunette. 

First stop, Forever 21 because you KNOW that store has to have leather pants and coat! Well I got lucky because they had a pleather pant ($13) and I found an AWESOME leather coat on clearance for $15! I'm in love with it! (I will totally wear it again in real life.) I struggled finding the top with summer being over so I ended up buying a tight fitting tee at H&M for $6 and altered it. I cut off the shoulders, hemmed the top and sewed some elastic down the front to give it a little shape with some ruching. I already had some red cork shoes, (not exactly the same as her slip-ons but enough to make it work I felt.) Steph had the perfect belt that she loaned me. THANKS STEPH! I had big black and gold hoop earrings, and finally I curled/teased the heck out of my hair (and added some clip in extensions that I already had) to finish off the look. Total estimated cost: $35. Here's mine:

Like my "straw" cigarette? Ha ha. I wasn't about to buy a whole pack for 1 prop.

And us together:

Won a contest for best couples costume!

What a fun time we had! Stick around and I'll be back to show you Mike the knight (toddler costume), Popeye and Olive Oyl (adult costumes), and Staypuft Marshmallow man (infant costume) from this year.

Toodles!
-Linds

Homemade Popeye and Marilyn Monroe costumes…

Popeye! (Disregard the toilet bowl cleaners in Eli’s hand. He wouldn’t let go of them so they had to be in the pic. And don’t worry, they’ve never been used )

My fav . Eli with his cousin Roland and his great grandparents.

My favorite part of Eli’s costume is that I didn’t have to go out and buy any supplies because I had it all on hand. Bonus! I can’t believe the amount of money people spend on Halloween. Holy Cannoli batman!

So I made his pants based off a current pair of pants that fit, the top was based off a onesie style at the shoulders so it could fit over his head no problem. For the forearms I sewed 2 tubes of fabric, stuck one inside the other and added stuffing in between the two layers and then surged the 2 bottoms pieces together so it wouldn’t come out, and then just sewed the other ends of the tube to the black top. The hat I based of this tutorial but had to essentially come up with my own pattern and measurements because I wasn’t able to download the pattern and it was for a doll anyways. As you can probably tell from the top photo, Eli’s belt is just a one dimensional piece of felt. I didn’t feel like going ALL out on a costume he wears for a few hours on one day.

As for my costume, I went as Marilyn Monroe. I wanted to do Olive Oyl to match Eli but then an adult Halloween party invite came and I thought I could still do Olive and make an adult sized Popeye costume for Aaron. But as you can imagine, after he got wind of Aldo’s costume he didn’t want to go as “just Popeye”, followed by the comment of “Jeeze babe, why do you always pick the cute or frumpy characters?? I mean Olive Oyl? What the heck?? That isn’t sexy at all. Why can’t you pick a sexy character??” Ha ha ha. Because! Because I’m not the sexy costume wearing kind of gal :/ Then we went back and forth about Aaron going as the bald assassin from the movie “Hitman” with Timothy Olyphant and I was going to go as the “sexy” brunette in the red dress. But after asking my hair professional facebook friends about dyeing my hair black for the character, I learned that my hair being so light currently would probably stain even if I did a temporary dye or spray and decided against it. Plus I convinced Aaron the “bald head” at the costume store wouldn’t turn out as cool as he imagined and he wasn’t willing to shave his head, so he decided against it as well. Sigh. Back to square one and Popeye and Olive were still an adamant “no”. This made me think to stick with a blonde character, and someone “Sexy”, and that’s how I decided on Marilyn since Aaron approved. He ended up going as Rambo :

My costume cost about $15 because I had to buy the white fabric. I definitely didn’t have 3 yards of shiny white fabric lying around. I even sewed fake boobs to shove in my dress! Ha ha. Again, I just wung this costume as well. I scoured the internet for pictures of Marilyn’s iconic white dress and tried to make it as close as possible and then just started assembling it based on my measurements. The skirt part is just a giant circle I cut out, and the halter part is a giant hour-glass shaped piece of fabric if you can picture it, that I wrapped around my neck and attached to a band of fabric around my waist. It definitely wasn’t perfect enough to wear to a gala or anything, but was great for a Halloween costume. I even dusted off my invisible zipper insertion skills and put them to work for the back part of the dress.

Overall, I think I may have picked the wrong career path. Just kidding, I love nursing but I reeeeeeallly loved coming up with the costume ideas and seeing them come to life! I feel I have so much more freedom in making costumes then actual clothes because they don’t have to be perfect. They can have “fake” aspects (ie Popeye’s felt belt) just as long as you succeed in creating the illusion of the character. Hopefully I have just as much motivation next year. I’m already feeling the pressure to come up with a great costume because Steph and I won the costume contest both years so far and people were saying they couldn’t wait to see what we would come up with this year since they loved the Shinning twins last year. Remember that one?

So if you could all start thinking of ideas and shooting them my way, I’d really appreciate it. Pleaseandthankyou .

Alrighty, that’s all she wrote! Night ya’ll.

-Linds

Homemade Lycan costume…

 Well as most of you have already seen via Facebook, Steph and Aldo were characters from the movie “Underworld”, Selene and her captured Lycan to be exact. What do you think? A pretty close likeness eh? I was impressed with Steph’s costume but they were struggling coming up with Aldo’s part of the duo when she came to me for help. “Will you help me make Aldo a Lycan costume? Puh-leeease?? I need ideas. I want it to be awesome!” Well since being the most awesome sister in the whole wide world is my specialty, I obliged .

**Warning. I fully intend to toot my own horn in the following paragraphs**

I scoured the internet for tutorials on how to make a muscle suit but couldn’t find anything. Grrr. Then I downed some coffee, (aka my crack) and got to work brainstorming ideas. You want to know my secret?? I used one of Aaron’s t-shirts and cut it up to use as the base for the suit and sewed the black fleece on top of it making sure to use slightly bigger pieces of the fleece in order to create pockets to stuff. Then I just re-sewed the shirt back together using the same seams and voila! Muscles! That’s it. I googled body builder images to see the defined muscles more clearly in order to make it look as life-like as possible.

The costume is 2 pieces, the chest/arms and the legs (I used the same method as the chest/arms by cutting up a pair of Aaron’s knit pants and using them as the pattern pieces. Thanks Honey!!) Here’s a pic mid construction with Steph modeling it for me:

Front view

Back view.

This really was a great first time muscle making project for 2 reasons, 1.) I used black fleece which is very forgiving and hides a multitude of sins (versus using spandex or lycra, gosh that would have been a nightmare!), and 2.) We were adding fur in random places so that also added extra coverage for any imperfections .

I seriously couldn’t believe the amazing luck we had with it all working out the very first take. There was no trial run or major calculations/measurement mistakes or anything! This was it!

As for the feet, Aldo’s close buddy made him stilts to walk on using wood which made him go from 5’8 to 6’5! (Funny story, when we walked into the Halloween party, everyone was in awe of his costume and as Aldo was walking by, one guy said to another, “wow, and that dude has the perfect height for that costume!”) Ha ha ha. Made my night. Illusion complete. The only thing we didn’t make was the mask, and hands (I’m not that ambitious!)

This is no doubt my proudest sewing creation . For those of you who are not on Facebook, ahem JACI, tomorrow I’ll show you the costume I made for me, followed by my son’s.

Until then, buenas noches mis amigos!

-Linds