Our homemade Halloween costumes for girls

In the forth grade I tried making a costume out of two cardboard boxes to be a pair of fuzzy dice hanging from a rear view mirror with my friend Sarah. At the last minute we agreed the contraption would hinder our ability to run through her neighborhood gathering as much candy as we could before people turned out their lights. So we dressed up as something different.

In college my roommate and I shopped Goodwill for ideas and costumes the day of Halloween, totally on the fly.

When I was younger my mom made my Halloween costumes. I don’t remember any of them coming from a store. In this same spirt, I make my daughters’ costumes too.

I want my girls to be creative with their costume choices. Like we did,  before there were Halloween mega shops and costumes started appearing on shelves before the back-to-school sales were finished.

That’s why this year, starting in August, I immediately recycled all catalogues that came in the mail featuring Halloween costumes. I wanted to hear the costume ideas they would create on their own, without the influence of advertisements and marketing via our mailbox. It became my little experiment.

The other big reason I avoid store-bought costumes is because my girls are getting older. And the costumes available in the post toddlers sizes are mostly scary or skippy, and not warm enough to wear out on Halloween night.

The post  Taking Back Halloween: Fun & Empowering Costumes for Mighty Girls, at A Mighty Girl, does a nice job detailing what I mean here – including additional links to stories like Avoiding sexy costumes for girls, at CNN.com.

Finally, Saturday afternoon, just one hour before our neighborhood Halloween party – I finished making the last costume for my daughters.

It was the one I dreaded making the most. Because I didn’t know exactly how I was going to do it, until the moment I started sewing.

My middle girl decided to be a swan for Halloween. Not a ballet, fairy kind of swan with pretend wings. That would be too easy!

She wanted to be a white swan with real feathers and an orange beak!

It was the creative, independent kind of idea I was hoping they would come up with – so much that I wondered oh yikes! What have I gotten myself into?

But it worked out……

The skirt was made using two feather boas cut into four pieces each, and sewn to an elastic band forming the top of a skirt. Under the feather skirt is a hand-me-down flower girl dress that was handmade by someone (??) layered over a white turtle neck and gray leggings. Swans have grey legs and feet, which was an important detail my middle girl wanted to replicate.

Around her neck is a small boa and the two hair pieces are pre-made clips from the craft store. All the feather and boa things were on sale buy one get one half off the day I was there. For her beak we had a yellow body crayon from an old gift but the orange one was missing. So I layered her nose with the yellow crayon followed by an orange marker. I figured she’s covered her arms with marker before – so why not her nose?

My little girl came up with the idea to be a “Purple Baby Princess.”  Because she is OBSESSED with purple. Using a curtain from the girls’ old bedroom, with the addition of a some frilly, shinny princess details, her dress was done in a flash and totally on the fly. It made her very happy. 

Lastly, here is Fern, from Charlotte’s Web. She is posing sideways, looking just like the cover of the book! She is carrying a Trick-or-Treat bag featuring an illustration from the book that I printed (from here) on fabric paper and sewed onto the bag I made from an up-cycled coffee bean sack. The only thing I had to buy extra for her costume was the white collared school uniform shirt I found on clearance for $4.99.

All together now…taa daaaa! 

To see more of our homemade Halloween costumes, visit last year’s post on Easy to Make Halloween costumes featuring a Star Fairy, Yellow Jacket, and RainbowLadybug Fairy.