Since I went as Mary Poppins, of course I needed a Bert! My husband was happy to oblige.
Most of his costume was pretty low-key. The white pants are a pair of scrubs from Walmart. I made him a quick felt bow tie. He wore his own white dress shirt. And, we bought him a skimmer hat for about a buck at a costume store. I took the patriotic paper ribbon off of it and put on a red ribbon to match the jacket.
He needed some white shoes to go with it, but didn't have any, so I made a pair of very quick and dirty spats to go over his shoes. They're not hemmed or finished, there's no button closure, they're just a quick tracing of the shoe, with some elastic across the bottom of the shoe to hold them on.
The jacket was the trickiest part of his costume. I bought a $6 sport coat at Goodwill, in the lightest color I could find, that was close to his size. I tried bleaching it. It is (I'm pretty sure) wool, and I read online that Clorox bleach would dissolve it, but that hydrogen peroxide would work. I soaked it in H2O2 for 24 hours, and it might have gotten a tiny bit lighter, but didn't turn white. The H2O2 did, however, dissolve the thread that held most of the buttons on.
I looked into dyeing it, but there's no such thing (that I could find, anyway) as white dye, just color remover. And it contained sodium hypochlorite, or the same ingredient as Clorox bleach, so I figured it wouldn't work. I tried painting it with fabric paint, but it was too light and didn't cover the gray.
Finally, I gave up and just painted it with craft paint. Well, most of it, anyway. I sewed on the ribbon stripes first, in case the paint made it too hard to sew through the fabric. Then, I painted between the ribbons with a foam brush and craft paint. I ran out of craft paint on the sleeves and rather than buying more, I just used up a can of white spray paint I had on hand for the back and the sleeves.
I jokingly call it his "cement suit" as it's a little stiff. :) But, it loosened up as he wore it, and wasn't so bad. :)
And here's Bert and Mary Poppins together:
Happy Halloween, everybody!
4 comments:
You both look Awesome! What a wonderful idea. I love the Mary Poppins dress too!!! I am following you now!
You look great! We were Mary Poppins and Bert too but I wasn't brave enough to try to put together the chalk drawing outfits. Good job!
Check ours out at: jensennp.blogspot.com
Thanks for sharing at Skip to my Lou!
These turned out great! you both look awesome, im a new follower and i'd love if you'd follow me back!
Julianne
www.sewfantastic.blogspot.com
I love finding things for our Halloween costumes at Goodwill too. Good job! :0)
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