Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Lucy

A is for Alligator

One of the girls I work with has a daughter who wants to be an alligator for Halloween. First of all, that's a pretty cool costume for a 5 year old girl. Second of all, it got me thinking about how to make a cute, girly alligator costume. We already decided to go the tutu route so I got two shades of green tulle and started making a tutu (I need more tulle to finish it). Then we were figuring green long sleeved tshirt, red and white striped tights or leggings (the alligator doll she is basing the costume on wears red and white checked overalls) and some sort of alligator hat. Of course, alligator hats aren't really readily available.

So I have been thinking of options. I thought of buying an alligator stuffed animal, taking the head off and making it a hat (gruesome, right?) or making something with a baseball hat and cardboard or some foam. None of it seemed easy enough or cute enough.

And then I thought about finding a hooded towel that was an alligator and THEN I thought about just making a hood out of some green fleece I already had. And so I spent a lot of my day working out this:

That's before I fixed the eyes so they weren't so floppy and added ribbon to keep it on. Here's the finished look (please excuse my scariness, it was late and I spent the whole day sewing):




The teeth and the eyelashes are my favorite part.


And in other projects, here's a picture of my niece wearing the skirt I made her. I LOVE that fabric and I have some to make my own skirt, once all the costumes are done.

First costume done!!

Well, mostly. I need to find socks...I might go with white socks instead of yellow. What do you guys think?

Bug is going to be Charlie Brown.



Here's his shirt (front and back):



I bought fabric that didn't need to be hemmed and I also got fusing paper so I could just iron on the squiggle. I cut out the pattern and ironed it and the whole thing took 15 minutes. That's the kind of project I love!


I might make a second one to post in the shop since I bought a back up shirt (on sale at Children's Place) in case this ended up being a more difficult project.

As for the rest of the outfit, he already has a pair of brown shorts and brown shoes. So, like I said, we just need the socks.

Next up is Monkey's Snoopy costume. My plan is to make a pair of white flannel pants (an easy project) and use a white hoodie to make the Snoopy ears and body. Hopefully it works out.

After that it's two dresses for my sister and me (Sally and Lucy) and a striped red shirt for my brother-in-law (Linus). The dresses are the big question. I don't sew with a pattern very often. Cross your fingers!

October

So. I love October because it means Halloween and Halloween means costumes! Yay!

Since most of my costumes are going to be trial and error this year, I'm going to try to post more while I'm making each one.

I also had a fantastic idea that I'm super excited about for adding product to the Etsy shop....it might not come all together till August of next year, but it's exciting and fantastic all the same.

So stay tuned for more awesome posts! And cross your fingers that I don't go insane trying to make all these costumes...