Wednesday, October 31, 2012

EWOK!!!!!

Halloween is my favorite holiday! I've always loved dressing up in costume. Now that I've gotten older, I can dress my son up too! Woo hoo!

For his first Halloween, I wanted to think of the cutest possible thing that I could dress him up as. I guess, for me, that would be baby Ewok.

EWOK!!!



I'm ecstatic with how this turned out! I used McCalls 6105, view A for the "teddy bear" suit.

View A is the skunk
Of course, I eliminated certain skunk like features and replaced them with more teddy bear features. I made the ears round, added a toe to the paw, made a small bear tail, and eliminated the patch on the head. I could have made the panda, but the head is oddly large.I'm really happy I stuck with the skunk.

The full costume
The paws (hand-stitched leather on fur)
The hood. The casing was a pain to put in, but it was well worth the effort.

I used some soft, curly fur that I picked up at Joanns. It feels like a blanket. Little Mr. Man loves to wear it. Overall it was a challenging pattern. It wasn't particularly difficult, but it was messy and time consuming. Involved is a good word. I would not recommend it as a last minute pattern. Be sure to give yourself plenty of time.
Side view

This was also my first time sewing with fur. It was a very different experience. After cutting out the pieces and getting fur EVERYWHERE, you have to trim inside the seam allowance to eliminate bulk. Then you stitch; then pick out all of the fur that is caught in the seam. And you have to do this on every single seam. That's right. Every. Single. SEAM! AHHH!

Then there's the casings. Casings for the hands. Casings for the feet. Casings for the head piece. It's a lot of work, but I think the results exceeded my expectations.



 For the hood, I just draped a piece of maroon knit over the hat and cut some holes for the face and ears. I took some leather shoe string and wrapped it around the sides so that the hood did not completely overtake the rest of the costume in terms of volume. I cut more of the leather shoe string in half and hand stitched stone buttons on the top.


Since we had a few parties and things to do around Halloween, I made Little Mr. Man a bow and turned him into a teddy bear.

Happy Teddy!

Happy Halloween!!!