How often do we pause to acknowledge the fact that our favorite bloggers and influencers have to create their seasonal content well in advance of the actual holiday/season? Like, the night before Halloween I’m sweating and resorting to shoddy workmanship to tie up all my loose ends while those influencers are probably kicking back thinking about how they finished that up weeks (maybe months?) ago! Just another way they can keep proving that they’re better than me. Or maybe they are also sweating but over Christmas stuff to our Halloween.
In any case, their efforts ought to be recognized.
Anyway, that was me, resorting to safety pins and duct tape at the eleventh hour, but we pulled it off and can rest a little easier until next year (who am I kidding, it’s full steam ahead to Holidaytown! No rest for the weary!). But we did it! We all had costumes! They are all within the same theme! They look decent (on a scale of Awesome to We’ll Let It Pass)!
We used a mix of DIY and store-bought. Our thoughts and ideas changed throughout but in the end I was happy with how our costumes turned out and I had a lot of fun doing a family theme. I’m not committing to doing a theme every year but I’d be down!
I know, such a mean mom making them take pictures before heading to our Halloween party! But I had to strike while the iron was hot, which in this case translates to “I had to take pictures while the white dress was still white.” Wendy has worn this costume three times and I have had to wash this costume three times! That girl’s known for a lot of things but cleanliness ain’t one of them! Taking photos before getting our hands on chocolate was essential!
Sorry! I keep getting distracted! So! Princess Leia. We chose this for Wendy because she is down to dress up as anything that has “Princess” in the name. I made both her dress and her belt. I will have a more in depth post on the dress pattern I used (which is McCalls 8251) later (hopefully this week, because it also features a costume). But I did change three things about the pattern. First, I cut the neckband on the fold to give it some height and make it more turtleneck-like. I also lengthened the skirt. I wasn’t going to do this at first, but chose to because the weather on Halloween is usually chilly. This year, we lucked out and had a gorgeous Halloween where no jackets were required but I’m still glad we went with a longer skirt.
The last change I made was to slash and spread the sleeves to give them a little more volume and drape. I used view C’s sleeve, which already had some gathers in the top. The fabric I used is a brushed polyester that I got from Joann’s. They had some other white knits that were cheaper but this seemed the softest and the most opaque. The best part about making Halloween costumes out of knit fabric? No hemming!!! Cut those corners!
I also made Wendy’s belt using some iridescent silver fabric that I had leftover from clear back when I made quiet books. To me the fabric seems like a cross between pleather and knit. It’s soft and it was a breeze to sew, thankfully. I just cut out the shapes and then put an elastic on the back of it. The elastic is sewn on one end…but closes with a safety pin on the other!
Next up is our lovely Rey! Originally, we weren’t going to do a family theme at all but Greta wanted to dress up in something like her dad. Which, Ben was making a Mandalorian costume for himself and, for awhile, he considered making Greta some armor too, just scaled down. But she can be a bit particular about what she wears and it didn’t seem likely that she’d enjoy wearing hard, clanky armor. I suggested she go as Rey and she loved the idea. My girls haven’t seen any of the Star Wars movies but I think when you’re an awesome, hardcore girl (like Greta) you can easily recognize a fellow awesome, hardcore girl. So she was down.
Not much to say about her costume because we just bought it on Amazon! It was only $13 I think and I might have been able to buy fabric for less than that but I probably would have had to put in 5 or so hours of work on it, so this was an easy choice for me. The costume’s not great quality but it’s decent and will hold up to some wear. The fit was spot on and it does look good and I didn’t have to endure a headache trying to figure out how to sew all the strappy thingies, so definite plus for me.
We did a bubble braid for her hair and I think she looks pretty darn cute! And hardcore! I’m sad that the girls’ accessories didn’t make it into the pictures! Ben made lightsabers for them that turned out really cool.
At first I was going to go as Boba Fett and Owen was going to be Baby Yoda, but we were running dangerously low on steam and time and so a week or so before Halloween we called it and swapped to Han Solo and Chewbacca. And we mostly chose this because of ease. We already had a bear costume that fit Owen so I just had to make a little bandolier for him. We went to a thrift store for to find boots and a vest for me but ended up not buying anything because I have a hard time spending money on something I’m only going to wear one time! I knew I could make myself a vest but we were down to the wire and I, in a very serious way, did not want to sit down and sew a vest with the only black fabric I had on hand (linen). So in a last ditch effort I hit the clearance racks at Kohl’s and found a sleeveless polo for $5 that I chopped open, pinned and tucked and thanked for letting me use it so. I needed a holster as well. Again, in an effort to not spend a bunch of money on one time wears, I opted to buy some brown suede instead of faux leather but I didn’t take into consideration the fraying factor. Oh well, it worked for two wears.
And finally, the piece de resistance, Ben’s Mandalorian costume! (I apologize for the poor lighting!). Believe it or not, Ben made most of his costume! Almost a year ago, Ben bought a 3D printer. He’s really enjoyed playing around with it. A little ways into using it, he decided to make himself this costume.
The costume took an insane amount of time. There are well over a dozen pieces he had to print, taking over a thousand hours of printing. Some of the pieces took over a week of nonstop printing to be completed. Not to mention there were pieces that printed halfway (or more) then the print failed for whatever reason so it had to be reprinted. After the pieces were printed, Ben spent hours and hours (I don’t know how much time, but a LONG time!) puttying, sanding, and painting each armor piece. Even the gun was printed and assembled, as well as the helmet (and the lightsabers that I don’t have pictures of)! He also has a jet pack which unfortunately is not pictured.
I’m not going to pretend to know what materials and paints he used because he used a lot. But he did use a graphite powder on top to give that shiny, metallic look which I think is pretty cool. He bought his flight suit online which included the cape. The flight suit itself was pretty great quality but the cape was lacking so I sewed some pleats and the draping around the neck of the cape. Ben used very heavy duty velcro to attach the armor to the flight suit and I sewed the velcro in place on the flight suit. The velcro was meant to stick but Ben reinforced it on the armor pieces with glue just to make sure they really did stick.
I think Ben was probably the happiest about his costume in the end (which is saying something because I think the girls really loved their costumes too. Owen wasn’t very impressed with any part of this holiday). There are things Ben would like to tweak and work on but he’s saying he’s just going to wear this costume every Halloween for the rest of his life. But he’s got a Boba Fett one in the works so we’ll see in a few years if this is actually the case.
Well, that’s that! Happy belated Halloween!
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