My favorite part of Halloween is dressing up. Historic fashion and period dramas all play into my enjoyment of dressing up and pretending to be someone else for a moment. I like Halloween costumes, and I really like the costumes I put together for our family this year.
T has been fascinated with the Titanic since the Titanic exhibit came when he was about 4. It has never waned. He is a Titanic expert. So, of course, he chose to go as Captain Edward Smith for Halloween. Who's that, you ask? Why, he's the captain of the Titanic.
I altered a cheap too-big boys dress shirt into his jacket and sewed on gold buttons. I made the epaulets out of felt. I altered a $3 pair of women's white capris from Salvation Army into his pants. The hat is a black women's visor, a circle of stiff white felt, and white cotton fabric draped over the felt and sewed to the inside of the visor. The scrambled eggs and insignia are printed from images I found online (that's the actual White Star Line insignia) onto cardstock, cut out, and hot glued on. My favorite part is the beard. It's gray felt, tied on over his ears with ribbon.
J's costume is also inspired by a museum exhibit. We went to see King Tut this fall and he fell in love. He's been devouring books and documentaries on King Tut ever since. He was super excited to be King Tut for Halloween.
I briefly contemplated buying a King Tut headdress at the gift shop or a party store for this costume, but they were much more expensive than I could make this one for, so I stuck with homemade. The headdress is stiff black felt stitched to a headband and painted with blue and gold glitter craft paint. The back of the headdress is painted broadcloth. The tunic is made of broadcloth, too--leftover from an old project. I free handed the shape of his tunic, cut it out, and sewed the two sides together. Easy-peasy. His belt is gold cord. The collar is, again, painted broadcloth.
He felt silly walking like an Egyptian in the above photo. Can you see it in his face? Cute boy. Here's the back of the costume:
H was
Gus-Gus from Cinderella, since Hubby and I were Prince Charming and Cinderella and H is still too young to protest having a family theme. :) His costume was a brown sweatsuit with hoodie, with a too-small yellow shirt I got for $1 on clearance. (Too-small because Gus's shirt is too small for his big belly). I made mouse ears out of felt and a hat out of another clearance t-shirt and stitched both to the hoodie. Isn't he a cute little Gus-Gus?!
Hubby was Prince Charming. His shirt (jacket?) was made out of a jacket I found with the scrubs at Walmart, sort of the kind you see dental hygienists wearing. I cut off the cuffs on the sleeves and hemmed them. I hot-glued fancier buttons onto the snaps and sewed on epaulets made of felt and gold fringe. I stitched on the gold cord and made a sash and belt out of gold ribbon. The pants are scrub pants with gold ribbon trim stitched to the sides.
I was, of course, Cinderella.
My costume was the only one that I used a pattern for. I used
Simplicity 2813 for the dress. I used costume satin, which I'm not a huge fan of working with; it's too slippery and frays too easily. I wore my extra-full petticoat that I wore under my wedding dress for the perfect amount of pouf. I stuck some velcro on a piece of black grosgrain ribbon for my choker and covered an old headband with left over fabric for the headband. The gloves are store bought. The earrings are large white wooden beads that I gave a coat of pearlized nail polish I had laying around to make them look more like pearls. I hot glued them to some clip-on earring backs.
It was a hit with little girls everywhere. One little girl at our church's Trunk or Treat followed me around much of the evening, asking me if I was really Cinderella. And, when Hubby and I stopped by Walmart to pick up some treats on our way to another Halloween party (while dressed in our costumes), several little girls got seriously excited about seeing Cinderella. It was kind of fun to be such a celebrity for a weekend. :)
Here we are all together at the Trunk or Treat on Friday. The party was outside, in the dark, so the lighting isn't great in this photo...
It was fun to wear our Halloween costumes!
