That time of year again... Halloween.

It's that time of year again, when people find out you sew and start asking you to make costumes for them... (To which my response is, it's cheaper to buy commercial than to hire me, and my costume sewing is limited to pint-sized kids who look at me with big, sad eyes and beg!) I don't always make costumes for the kids. It's usually about every other year. By the time Grace was three, she'd figured out that if she wanted something, I could make it for her. And that was the beginning of... unusual costume requests. That year, it was a vampire pumpkin. This year, it was a creepy possessed, broken doll. So I went into the stash... and came up with a 1990s Simplicity Daisy Kingdom pattern. Luckily, the crinoline I made her last year still fit, so I didn't have to make one, and I had almost all the materials in my stash. Total cost? $1.75 because I didn't have a yellow 12" zipper. I drafted the pocket later, after Grace decided that the doll had a pet voodoo doll and we needed someplace for it to sit.

I used a gingerbread cookie cutter for the shape and partially modeled it after Lilo's doll, Squidge, from Lilo and Stitch. She's made from scrap and things I had laying around. Somehow, I think that the young women leaders who taught cross stitch and basic sewing every thought it'd be used for this! Apparently, said pet had to be chained to Grace, so I aged a bit of chain I had by pouring toilet bowl cleaner on it and letting it sit for 30 minutes. Hello, dolly!



To complete the look, Grace needed a really, really big bow...Ten inches here and made with wired ribbon so that it would stand up on top of her head. I figured out how to make basic bows when she was a toddler simply because of how expensive they are.



And then pantaloons. Which are from an out-of-print McCall's Ruffles and Lace pattern. I used leftover fabric from her baptism dress and ended up putting red ribbons on the outside of the legs and on the front of the waistband. The rest was all makeup.

Well, and a lot of attitude. The heart on the front says, "Hug Me," and she's covered in cracks that have been "stitched" back together.

The heart will be removed next week, because she's decided that she wants to wear the dress to church. No objections because without the pantaloons and heart, it's just a really pretty dress!

And next to who started it all.... Nicole wanted to be Jigglypuff. But with Jigglypuff costumes at $36, that just wasn't going to happen. I was staring at a picture, and realized that it was really fairly simple to make; after all, I've made pumpkin costumes before! That's right. Pumpkin costumes. But so we weren't wasting money, I made the under part out of Peekaboo Pattern Shop's Alex and Anna Winter pajamas. The hat is an out-of-print McCall's, with self-drafted ears and hair curl. And the shoe covers are from Simplicity's toddler Wizard of Oz pattern. 



But, well, according to the Pokemon experts at my house, Jigglypuff has a microphone. So I got my sister to crochet half a ball and got to work on a toilet paper tube...  And we have a recognizable Jigglypuff.

Little brother Alex wanted to be a Squirtle. So I repeated the process for him, only self-drafted a tail, used different colors for the front and back of his turtle shell, quilted in lines, and then went over them with black fabric paint. He loves it! Actually, at my congregation's Halloween party today, the tail ended up coming unsewn from the top, so I had to do some quick repair work for Monday.







It's whip stitched on top, you see, and he managed to pull it out. The white line is a matter of recycling. See, I'd decided that the hem of Grace's baptism dress needed some lightweight chain in it to make sure it wouldn't float up. And I put it in a white tube to make sure nothing showed through. Well... it made the dress not hang right, so I removed it. The chain became part of her Halloween costume, and the tube part of Alex's.

Here's a better view of the jammies. He's on the line of needing a 4, so that's what I made and they're a little baggy. But hey, they'll still fit next year!  What was really cute was a little boy dressed as a Pokemon trainer decided he had to "capture" the wild Squirtle and spent several minutes and many different attempts with styrofoam pokeballs trying to do it. And then he moved on to our Jigglypuff!





Total cost for the little ones was about $11 each and that included jammies to wear later. Usually, sewing is about the same for making it as buying it. But just not so this year for Halloween costumes. The kids look great, and I got to make them something that was either too expensive or unavailable that can be reused later. So, do y'all think it was worth the effort?