Halloween Costumes

I can fondly remember making Halloween costumes when I was a kid.  Other than a mask here or there, we didn't go buy a costume from the store.  Rather, we used our creativity and things laying around the house to create our costumes.  Here's a couple photos I found from the "good ol' days" with my brothers and me.

I hope to continue the tradition with our children to make their costumes.  I look forward to when they are a bit older and can take a more active role in creating their costumes.

K was a doctor today.  It's the same costume that Santa "contracted" me to sew last year as a dress-up costume.  I used two patterns, a costume pattern by McCall's for doctor scrubs and a pajama pattern by Butterick.  The scrubs were made as the pattern instructed.  The doctor coat was made from the pajama pattern; I used the pattern for the button-up jammie top.  I also used the special stitches on my machine to add her name to her pocket. 

B was Superman and I owe most of his costume to Dana at http://www.dana-made-it.com/ and all of her awesome tutorials.  I used the 90-minute shirt tutorial to make the top.  I also added a yellow felt belt (Ha ha!  That rhymes.).  The Superman logo was painted on the shirt using a freezer paper stencil (a.k.a. Poor Man's Screen Printing).  Click here for a tutorial about using a freezer paper stencil.  The pants were just traced from a pair of pants B wears, but here's a tutorial for making your own pants pattern.  There are also tons of patterns for a basic pair of pants, including both of the patterns listed above.  B's cape was a piece of red cotton with a casing on one side to gather it by his neck.  I ended up tacking it on to the shirt rather than having a string tied around his neck to keep it a bit safer.

Now that I spent my spare time during the weekend making B's costume and spent last night trick-or-treating, I better get working on the never ending job of correcting papers!