Costume history

I love Halloween. The dressing up, decorating the house and seeing the costumes of the kids who come to the house. I love to make costumes and have fun with what I come up with. So before I do a post about this years costume headaches - here is a look at some of the things my daughter has been.

1st year - 2006 - K is 7 months old

This was an easy year. My MIL had seen a lion costume and bought it, before I knew what she would be. My MIL did this because her son was  lion for his first costume. I would have liked to be consulted before hand, but I survived and went with it. She now realizes I make costumes, so she doesn't surprise me.

2nd year - 2007 - K is 19 months

This year I went a little easy on myself. K was seriously into Teletubbies. I know most people hate the show. The thing I liked about the show - was it showed the beginning of the day and at the end the Teletubbies went to sleep. K would watch this before nap and bed - and when the show was over she would come to us asking for her milk and would head upstairs to bed for nap or sleep without any fussing!

Anyway to make the costume I found a red blanket sleeper at a thift store. I took a peice of grey felt and painted glitter glue on the felt. For the hat I knitted it and when I got to the top I made a tube which I filled with polfil and sewed into the shape I needed. She gets a kick out of seeing the hat now when she runs across it in the dress up clothes.

2008 - 3rd year - K is 2.5 yrs old

This was the last year I could make the decision about what she was going to be. I made her a fairy costume. The pattern was McCalls 4887. I did spend too much on the fabrics, but I fun seeing how it turned out. Because I like to make the next size up when I sew costumes - there are still pieces of this costume that she can wear. This was also the year of naked baby - she didn't want to wear the costume and I had many fights getting her in it. To the point at our MOMS club Halloween party - she ran around in just her diaper! My friends called her the New Year's Baby for doing that. I have noticed that with a lot of my friends - between 2-3 yrs old thay do not want to get dressed up in costume.

2009 - 4th year - K is 3.5 yrs old.

This was the start of the princesses in our house. She said she wanted to be Cinderella. But when I took her to choose the pattern and the fabric she choose a basic princess dress - without it being a Disney design. She choose Simplicity 2569 . I will say that this dress got well worn, and now 2 years later, she can still wear the dress. The skirt is getting shorter on her, and it is fraying and the tulle is ripped - but she will wear it.

2010 - 5th year - K is 4.5 years

This was an interesting choice on K's part. Part way through the year she decided she wanted to be a

Veterinarian. She didn't change her mind once - and I was waiting. So I made the scrubs and bought a lab coat to go with it. My hubby and I found a cute dog carrier set and tool set for her. I should have done better making a name tag and sewed on some little anaimals - because everyone though she was a doctor. I was lucky this did get done - because I was pregnant in my 1st trimester with our 2nd child. So there were days I wasn't feeling up to things.

2011 - 6th year - K is 5.5, and A is 5 months

This is the big year - Rapunsel! After Tangled came out, she wanted to get the dress and hair. I kept putting her off. One because she was bigger than 4-6x you can find for most dress up clothes for girls and two I wasn't keen on fake hair.

I'll show you how this years costume turns out in the next post along with what I came up with for A, now that I have 2 kids I can have fun with the next few years of costumes on our house will be fun.

Creating Halloween 2009

Since we moved to a new house this year I needed some new ideas for my Halloween decoration. The last few years I had the porch and a walkway to decorate for Halloween. This year I have a longer porch - but not a great walkway to work with yet.

I first found an idea in an old Lesisure arts book "Sew No More - Holiday Decor". This from part of there hard cover book series. The idea found was to make large standing ghost for the porch.

In their version The ghosts were holding candy corn pieces with beads. I was looking for something to say Halloween; so I went with "Trick or Treat". I think I'll mix it up over the years with "Happy Halloween" or other things. Another thing I did differently was the heads. These ghosts were meant to be inside or well protected. The orginal idea had the ghosts heads made of poly fil and batting. I decided to go a little different. I was able to make Paper mache heads with balloons. This was a great project because it allowed my daughter to get involved.

So here we are getting started. I used a great recipe from family fun -  paper mache recipe. It was easy to use and made a lot and could be saved for a little bit.

Here is Katie showing off her work.

and all of the finished pieces.

You might be thinking, there are only 2 ghosts there. Well we used two balloons there, and two more in the trees - pictures and info to come later. We also had a fun experiment with a pinata; which is another story for another day.

We used these balloons and did the next week a quick coat of white paint, so that alot of the newsprint wouldn't show through the fabric. I then took these heads and filled them with spray expanding foam. I did alot of experimenting here. I think next year when I fill them I'm going to have them upside down to begin with. When the heads were sitting in the boxes to be filled the foam didn't expand up as much. but I noticed when I tilted a few the foam moved more the way I wanted it to. This gave my heads with some wieght that when I covered them with fabric they didn't collasped and they held up over the season. I plan on making new each year, since the only thing I don't think will last is the heads.

At this point you can see the head on the tomato cage frame. The book suggested a 36" frame - but at the end of season I could only find 54". I think in the end it was better for me because they stood out better. I duct taped a couple of 5/8" dowel rods as arms to the head - since there was no bar to use there.

 

From there it is add the fabric. I love the way fabric is coming these days. I was able to buy basic white muslin at Joann's in 108" width. This meant for the 2 ghosts I got 6 yds, and with a coupon wasn't that bad. Even better I'll be able to wash the fabric when I take the ghosts down and reuse for next year - no plastic! I drapped the fabric over the frame and took some black grosgrain ribbon to tie a bow at the neck.

The words were an old project I love. Back a few years ago I saw a banner in made in Leisure Arts "Spirit of Christmas" book. They took illustration board and cut out letter made from blowing up a font to 600 pt. Well I took this idea and traced the letters on to fun foam and then cut out the letters. This way they are water proof and wear a little better. I then took my scrapbooking eyelets and made holes at the top for some yarn to hold the letters. I'll do another post about this later - since I have done these letters for many projects.  Either way, they held up and look good to use for next year.

Enough about these - I'll do more posts on the rest of the decor shortly.