Halloween Part One

After last year's Halloween my sister and I started discussing costume ideas for this year's Halloween.  We talked to the kids to see what they wanted to do.  Kira again wanted to be a princess, but we were having a hard time coming up with another fun theme that would allow for this.  Damian mentioned Angry Birds.  He is addicted to the game and even owns a shirt.  After discussing this we decided that  this would be a great theme.  The kids all settled on which birds they wanted to be.  Kira would be the Black bomb bird, Damian the Red birds, Joy's two would be the Yellow and Blue birds, and Joy and I would be the Pigs.

Now that our themed was settled we started looking for costumes.  After looking around we realized that cost was going to be a huge problem.  Manufactured costumes were running between $30-50 apiece.  If we dressed everone up, it was going to run us anywhere from  $220 to $300.  Ouch.  Thus we decided to make our own.  We looked around online and found this blog, The Clock Blog.  They blogger had made some for him and his friend.  The problem was this is about the only instructions and they aren't very good from a instruction stand point.  Its more of a rough how to.  So out came the art supplies.  I have enough know how to wing this project. A couple of designs later and we were ready to start.

I took measurements from the kids to get a rough idea on fabric amounts.  The ranged from 0.5 yards for the littlest to 2 yards for the biggest. The it was just a matter of felt, fabric paint, fusible interfacing, a couple of t-shirts, and some miscellaneous supplies. A trip to the fabric store and two to the art supply store. Netted us enough materials to make 6 costumes.  The total cost was right at about $100.  Not bad considering what it would have cost us to buy them.  Now it was just a matter of time to complete all of the costumes.

I started by making a newspaper template for each costume.  This was much easier than trying to draw the shapes out on the fabric.  I was able to hold the templates up to the kids to determine sizing and a rough fit.  If you try this, make sure to account for seams and allow yourself an extra inch or so. Then it was just a matter of laying it down on top of the fabric.  I pinned it to all three layers, the front, back, and the lining so I would only have to cut once.



Then I cut out and sewed the bottom sections of the red, black, and yellow birds. A little bit of trimming and the fronts were off to a good start.






I didn't want to waste the felt, so I raided my kid's art supplies for some construction paper.  I had already sketched out rough faces, so between my drawings and Rovio's site I made faces for each of the birds.  This This worked well as I made stuff too small to start with and had to resize the pieces a few times.  I played with the pieces until I was happy with how everything looked.  A double check from Joy and Kevin to make sure that everything looked right and I had my templates for all of the felt.