Costumes on a Whim

So a few Wednesdays ago the kids and I were invited to a Birthday party...costumes could be worn. Unfortunately I had already packed the kids' dress up clothes when we were planning the house closing March 1st so we headed to the storage unit...no dice. Found a few of the other things we needed, but the costumes were MIA.

One of the kids was NOT okay with it at all...tears flowed, a fit was on the horizon...grasping at straws I suggested we make our own costumes. This happened at about 1 p.m....the party was at 4:30 p.m. Great idea, Mom. Not.

The kids latched onto the idea...it WAS going to happen. So, we set to work. We determined that Leve should be Lemon Meringue (obvious!) and Kiki would be Blueberry Muffin....Finn assured me he'd come up with something on his own (whew!). So we set to work...first, we needed inspiration we used these two figurines to help us.

















I worked on Lemon Meringue first because it dawned on me that down in the basement NOT packed in the storage unit was the perfect base dress.

















It needed some blue on the bottom so I added a band of blue. I cut a strip, sewed it into a circle, then attached the circle to the base of the skirt. Simple.

Next it needed a blue bow. I used some scrap of the band to fashion a bow. I then secured the bow to the center of the dress.

























Next Lemon Merigue needed her hairdo....this was going to be tricky. NO yellow fabric to be had....so I took white polar fleece, cut the lemon wedge, and colored it yellow with a Mr. Sketch Marker...to get it to 'set' I put the piece of fabric in the microwave....I needed to dry it out as the yellow was getting EVERYWHERE...it worked like a charm! I then used black thread to backstitch the sections of the lemon onto the white/now yellow fabric. I added the leaves and attached the entire thing to a barrette with a few hand stitches.














Finally, I took a white pair of tights and used the Mr. Sketch Marker to make her yellow stripes on the tights. I also "set" these in the microwave.


Here is Lemon Meringue at the party...of course she's CARRYING her Lemon Meringue.





Now, Blueberry Muffin was MUCH simpler....we dug through Kiki's clothes in the basement and found this blue dress. She had several ideas of how we should dress it up. Most involved sequins and ribbon...after concluding there REALLY wasn't time for that we decided to just make a bunch of blueberries and stick them on the dress AND do a hair do. Basically its all just done with Wonder=Under. On the dress I also stitched around freehand with my machine. She chose the green leggings so she could match the doll and assured me she still looked like Blueberry Muffin even if she didn't dye her hair blue....whew!



All in all it was a little stressful, but mostly fun. Fun in that we worked together to make it happen and I could see the girls' wheels turning as they tried to think of HOW to make it happen with limited time and resources. It was also fun to see their joy as they put on their outfits and had a BLAST at the party. Finally, it was fun for Mama to spend time in creative mode! I'm looking forward to more costume making on the fly in the future!