Epic Halloween Costume Post

Ah Halloween. The time of year when everyone gets to make fun of young women who fall prey to the male gaze by dressing up as sexy-caterpillars, as if we're not all victims of the patriarchy and one cocoon away from The Yellow Wallpaper.

When I first had my beloved offspring, it occurred to me that it's a lot more fun to dress up an adorable, innocent child than my own mangy hide, and thus my appreciation for the holiday of Halloween was born like a phoenix from the ashes.

[HENCEFORTH LET IT BE KNOWN: For the purposes of this blog, I've decided to switch the moniker of my child from AAT/Above Average Toddler to "Babu," which was her nickname pre-birth.]

When Babu was a tiny, squiggly wiggly, pre-mobile infant and her first Halloween rolled around, her costume was obvious.

• First of all, it was an homage to her super secret name. 
• Second, it was basically a costume that would never work once she could walk so we had only one chance (unless she never learned to walk, in which case we'd have other problems). 
• Third, apparently when I was a child and we would play hangman at restaurants on road trips, it was always easy to guess my seven-letter word: MERMAID.

I didn't buy anything to make this costume because I'm a home-decor fabric hoarder. I had recently picked up about 50 yards of upholstery-weight fabric at the Exeter Handkerchief Company during one of their big clearance sales. I had no purpose for most of it but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Most of it is still sitting in the closet of my sewing room, but that's a post for another day.

Long story short, I had some velvet and satin just sitting around, as well as miscellaneous ribbons and (for some reason) a purple netting-type fabric.

I grabbed a vaguely flesh-colored onesie and used some bonding tape to attach the velvet to the front in the style of a seashell bustier. Then I cut out a bunch of scalloped rows of the green-blue satin and sewed them on top of the fish tail front I had cut out. When that was complete I sewed the front and back of the tail together and added a little ribbon tie in the back to secure it on her, and then MacGyver'd on the purple netting to add a little pizzazz.

Here's our little mermaid on Halloween, ready to hit the town at a baby Halloween party:

And here's another because she was so adorbs:

For Halloween Part II, I was fully into sewing and was ready to tackle a more ambitious project.

Off I went to my only local fabric store to peruse the selection in the pattern books.

Along the way I noticed a terrifying trend in adult Halloween costumes. I'm not sure if they think there's a lot of amateur productions of Cats that need costumes or if I've just massively underestimated some adults' passion for Halloween.

Heck, I gotta admire the confidence of anyone who makes and wears one of these.

But on to the children's selection.

I considered the little unicorn in the upper right hand corner of this pic.

This page was just lacking in imagination. 

Meh.

And then I saw it. A little fox!

So I procured the pattern along with some orange fleece. I originally ordered fleece in a mustard color that was all wrong for my little fox, but thankfully I have another project in mind for it this year so it wasn't a terrible waste.

Last fall we were living in an apartment that didn't even have a dining room table in it, so I made do with the kitchen peninsula. This was counter height so to reach my foot peddle I basically perched my bum on the edge of the stool and just accepted the back ache the next day.

I finished the hood and had to take a moment to get into the holiday spirit:

I had cut all the pieces one night after work, then one Saturday night I sewed the whole thing after Babu was asleep. Here it is complete:

Then, without letting my child try it on, I started freaking out that the legs were too long for my diminutive child, so I cut them shorter, to the length you see above. That was dumb because then it was waaaay too short.

I so silly.

So I added in a few new pieces in the leg area to add the length back in and all was well. ALL WAS WELL, OK?

Here's the back with her super cute little tail that I repositioned so she wouldn't step on it:

And here's the even more adorable front. Can't be a fox without some classic navy blue Converse sneakers either:

With Halloween II down, and III on the horizon, I'm feeling good about another fleecey costume. In fact, I've already picked it out and happen to have some fabric on hand that will work perfectly.

In other news, how did it get to be almost September already? It feels like just yesterday I put away my winter coat and snow boots, and now my Facebook feed is filled with kids doing their first days of school and whatnot. 

Le sigh. Circle of life, yada yada.