The Family Costume

Happy Halloween!!

From my family to yours!

I'd love to see what you and your family were for Halloween. Please drop some pictures or links in the comments so I can see how much fun you had this year!

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Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf

There was no way I was going to let my children and husband have all kinds of fun without me. And I never pass up a reason to sew up something beautiful for myself! Little Red Riding Hood may not be in the same fairy tale as the 3 Little Pigs, but she does cross over with the Big Bad Wolf and you better believe I took that up for a challenge. And it was a lot easier then I thought it would be.

Starting with the basics I made this cute Tee Dress from Ellie and Mac, added a pretty and modified half apron from The Seasoned Homemaker (pattern can be found here on Craftsy). I grabbed a cute basket from a local second-hand store because you can't be Little Red Riding Hood without a basket! And then topped off the whole costume with this gorgeous Red Double Brushed Poly from The Fab Clique to make a Stay Cozy Jacket from Ellie and Mac without layering the hood. The hood on this one is HUGE and perfect for Little Red Riding Hood!!

My handsome and devilish Coby is dressed all in thrift store clothes torn apart and patched back together with faux fur. For more details, check out this post. He says it's very scratchy and doesn't like the huge furry collar, but thankfully we still have some time to adjust it to be exactly what he wants. We figure it will take us a few years to make it perfect, especially considering he really would like to look like a werewolf from the movies, and I'm just not sure my sewing abilities are quite up to that level, yet. This is a great start!

I love this picture! I think it's a pretty sweet shot of the two of us. And we have to give credit where it's due, Kaylie took this photo! And all of the photos of the two of us. She is becoming quite the talented young lady!

My eyes are closed!! That's a shame because this is a good picture too! I love the way the sky looks in the background. And can you see that he is trying to steal the goodies from my basket? That sneaky wolf!

And he's trying to steal kisses too!! For shame!! That big bad wolf! 🤣 I wish I hadn't been laughing so hard, I scrunched up my face! But its a pretty good picture anyway.

And apparently, I finally gave in and let him take a peek into my basket! For shame!! It's a good thing I kind of like him! 🤣 He worked pretty hard to get this peek. And he's mine already, so I'm not ashamed to have let him! He is MY Big Bad Wolf after all!

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Adding Ears

Halloween is a time to dress up, pretend and use your imagination to become someone or something else. The three little pigs have tails and hoodies and really needed some ears to pull off the look. And would you know, there are no pig ear tutorials anywhere online. At least none for creating the kind of ears my children wanted.

Riven wanted his ears to stand up straight. Kaylie wanted her ears to both be floppy. Olyver didn't care what his ears did, but I thought that having just the tips be floppy would be adorable. So I made them myself, but I didn't take very many pictures and I really needed to take a whole lot more, so hopefully, I can make this make sense.

The first thing I did was decide on a general shape for the ears and chose this big, rounded triangle shape. Using the scraps from their Jolly Roger Raglans (you'll need the Add-on Pack for this because of the hoods) I cut 2 mirrored triangles for each ear. Oly's triangles were about 1/2 inch smaller then Kaylie's and Riven's were right in the middle. To add stability I cut felt out in the same size and shape. 

For Riven's ears to stand up, I made a single cutting of felt the exact same size as the ears, one per ear. Kaylie wanted floppy ears so I didn't add any felt. For Oly with just the tips flopping over, I cut them like the picture below.

I sewed up Oly's ears first and noticed right away that I should have made the felt shorter for both ears. Oh well, you live and you learn.

When sewing the ears, I put the right sides of the cotton lycra from The Fab Clique together and layered the felt on top. I kept the ears with the short sides of the triangles together so I wouldn't confuse the positioning of the ears. The short side, oddly enough, and contrary to the way I was holding them, would go on the bottom!

To attach the ears to the hood I had to cut the hood for easy insertion. Taking the outer hood pattern piece, I cut all the way down the hood approximately 4 inches from the opening. When I cut my fabric I added a half-inch seam allowance along both sides I had cut. When I added the ears, I measured down about 3 inches from the top of the cut for Oly, 3.5 inches for Riven and 4 inches for Kaylie. Fold down the long corner of the ear about a third of the way and sandwich the ear between the right sides of the split hood. Make sure the opening or front of the ear is facing the flat part of the hood and not the rounded back. Then I serged the half-inch of seam allowance right off and had a hood the exact same size as the lining but with ears! I completed the rest of the hood as normal.

For the noses, I just put fusible web between the layers of cotton lycra and ironed them on. Easy peasy!

Next time I do a project like this, I promise I will take a lot more pictures and show off the process a little better. What kind of "creatures" do your littles like to become for Halloween, or any time really? What have you tried that succeeded and had you jumping for joy?

The links provided in this post may be affiliate links where I receive a small commission from your purchase at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting me, my blogging and my sewing!

3 Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf

Welcome back for more Halloween fun! This year my kids get to be dressed up as the 3 Little Pigs! If you saw my last post, you probably noticed that their noses were just on their hats. Well, I decided that just wasn't quite fun enough and used a bunch of scraps to make my kids these cute little noses!! They were simple and quick and who doesn't love a project that uses up your scraps! My kids thought it was weird to have two noses, but they know they have a ridiculous mother and just went along with it.

Add in the Big Bad Wolf in the background and you get some really fun pictures!

His costume is just an old thrift store pair of jeans and a dress shirt all torn up and patched back together with faux fur from Joann's, a cute vest from the thrift store, and a costume steampunk hat with added wolf ears. Pretty simple and it looks great!

Check out that dramatic posing?

What cheese balls! This is a pretty good shot of the BB Wolf tail. It is stuffed with a pool noodle!!

Gotta get in a fake running picture!

No piggies were harmed in the taking of these photos, but they were all tickled until the oldest needed to pee and the youngest was in tears!

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Making Piggy Tails

These are the cutest little piggy tushes EVER!! And they were surprisingly easy to create. Let me show you how!

I borrowed the basic idea from Make and Love It so please go over there and see the piggy costume over there as well!

I started with two circles of pink fabric. Sorry for the terrible pictures, that circle doesn't even look pink! You'll have to just trust me that it's pink. Cotton Candy Pink Cotton Lycra actually, from The Fab Clique. It's a beautiful weight to work with and was just perfect for this tail project.

Anyway, two circles of pink fabric. I wasn't sure how long the tails would need to be, so I cut four the size of our plates, they were just smaller salad plates. And two the size of our bowls, also just regular-sized cereal bowls.

Then I drew a spiral on each set of circles. I tried to make a straight beginning and a straight ending spot. But that probably doesn't matter a whole lot because you can just cut a straight spot after the spiral is all cute out. And I did end up shortening the tails a lot! This tracing is on the big circle.

And this is the tail after it's cut out. I believe this one is from the bowl-sized circle. There are two layers of fabric there. The next step is to sew down the length of both sides of the curly tail and then flip them right side out.

Turning the tails took a little more work then I would have liked, but the tails were so cute!! I made a big one and the small one thin and then one of the big ones came out a lot thicker. The thick one didn't work nearly as well as the thin ones, but it was easier to turn! The thickness you use would probably depend on the look you're going for. I wanted more of a corkscrew curl for the tails, so I added some pipe cleaners!

Two pipe cleaners per tail. I was worried about them being poky, so used a bit of hot glue at either end with the pipes twisted in between to keep them together and make them a lot easier to thread into the tails.

After the pipe cleaners were threaded into the tails and the tails were shortened to the length I wanted I found the center back of the pattern, which in this case was the Patterns for Pirates Jolly Roger Raglan, and attached the tail with a clip, I then added the band and made sure the tail was sandwiched between the shirt and the band so the tail would be on the outside of the shirt after it was sewn up.

The placement was perfect! The tail turned out great! And because I added the pipe cleaner the tail was able to stay nice and curly and cute!

This technique can be used to create all kinds of tails! What kind of tail did you need for your costumes for Halloween this year?

The links provided in this post may be affiliate links where I receive a small commission from your purchase at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting me, my blogging and my sewing!

Three Little Piggies

Happy October!! I love this month! I love the crisp, chilly weather, the changing leaves and pretty much everything! I especially love Halloween! One of my favorite things about Halloween is making costumes that my children love. Sometimes it can be a real challenge but the outcome is usually very worth it!

This year we decided to make a family costume. We love being able to dress up together and go out trick or treating and having everyone know who we are and why we are all dressed up together and having each costume reliant on the others. After months and months of deliberation and lots of debate, we finally decided to have the kids be the Three Little Pigs!

The only real trouble I had was getting a shade of pink that would work for both boys and not make them look too girly. This is a big deal for Riven who gets mistaken for a girl often because of his long hair. Luckily I didn't have to worry about it for too long thanks to Dhee over at The Fab Clique. She always has the most delicious fabric in stock! She suggested this beautiful Cotton Candy Pink Cotton Lycra and it is just so perfect! It was the exact shade I needed for the inspiration to make these piggy hoodies! Each kid got a little bit of different color to accent and draw from their personalities a little bit.

I used the Jolly Roger Raglan from Pattern for Pirates and the Add-on pack for the hood and thumbhole cuffs. This is a great simple pattern that can be used to create a huge variety of looks! I use this pattern on a pretty regular basis to make cute shirts all the time. And I have used it for the base of lots of Halloween costumes in the past. It's just a good reliable pattern that is pretty simple to sew up and hack.

One of the simple hacks I did this time was to add ears and a pig nose to the hats.

I also added a cute curly tail to their hoodies! Now, really, does it get much cuter than that?

Oh, man! I cannot wait until Halloween so we can show off these costumes! My kids are getting a little bored waiting. It will get here soon enough!

The links provided in this post may be affiliate links where I receive a small commission from your purchase at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting me, my blogging and my sewing!