If you know me, you know I’m not a big fan of making outfits that will just get one use. Like Easter and Christmas outfits… and like Halloween. This fights with my love of creating Halloween costumes. So when I create the costumes, I try really hard to make sure that as much of the costume can be reused as is possible.
So even though The Ramblin’ Raglan Mega Pattern Pack has only been published for about a year, I’ve been using it for… well, 3 or 4 years to create Halloween costumes.
There’s a lot of thought that goes into which version of the pattern that I use for the costumes. Here’s what I’m thinking:
1. With these colors, she’s probably not going to wear them as clothes, so it’s best if they’re made into pajamas.
2. She won’t wear long sleeve pajamas, so they need to be the short sleeve version.
3. It’s Oregon, so there does need to be long sleeves… so a t-shirt underneath works for keeping warm.
Because of these ideas, I’ve made the ruffly short sleeve version for the past 3 years.
Here’s what I did to make each outfit a little bit individual:
I actually forgot how much I love this costume!! My sweet little witch!!
She’s wearing a purple RTW (Ready to Wear) long sleeve t-shirt under the Raglan nightie. The nightie itself, I made a bit wider at the bottom, to make it fuller over the little pettiskirt. It’s sewn from a black cotton with sparkles on it. You can kind of see the sparkles on the skirt here. The skirt, hat, tights and t-shirt were store-bought. Over it all, she’s wearing a little tabbed corselet.
The corselet is super easy. You can make it by measuring around the chest and around the waist, then make a trapezoid pattern piece, adding 1 inch for seam allowance. Sew tabs into the bottom. Put grommets or eyelets on both back edges and lace up with a matching ribbon.
This year, she wanted to be a vampire. I wanted to go all adorable creepy sweet like Claudia from Interview with the Vampire. Little Miss, on the other hand, wanted to be scary. So we split the difference.
We used the nightie pattern again with a solid black cotton fabric. Store bought black tights and long sleeve t-shirt are worn underneath. Over the top is two layered tulle skirts. I actually made a bunch of them- if they look too big in this picture, it’s because they are. I made them to last for a bunch of years.
This is last year’s costume. As you can see Mr.Man was a sweet adorable little owl. I love his sweet little face!
My Halloween lack of creativity is starting to show here- store bought leggings and long sleeve t-shirt under the raglan. The raglan this time is still nightie length- but hey! It’s purple this time! Wings and those same tulle skirts worn over the nightie. I made a little corselet again, this time without tabs, just sparkly black fabric.
I didn’t notice it at the time- but the sneakers paired with the tulle skirts is making me so happy. She’s like a little punk fairy. I love it.
For this year, I’m planning on blue tulle skirts over a blue raglan with a corselet… that sounds familiar. Maybe I should put some more thought into it!
So, what patterns are you hacking to create something original for Halloween?
This post was published on Muse of the Morning.com
