We have four girls in our family so buying costumes at $20 each was not an option. One halloween experience I had was when I had to make an angel, devil, Dorothy (yes, the wizard of Oz), and cheerleader costumes for my daughters.
Our first stop was the dollar store where we purchased a devil ear and tail pack, white bristol boards, a basket, a headband, red party streamers, and pipe cleaners.
The next trip was to the fabric store. I went straight to the clearance section. This is where they normally sell out-of-style fabric or left-over fabric that had been cut from the bigger pile and are too small to sell as a roll. We purchased white, red, and blue/white checkered fabric.
My handy-dandy sewing machine and I slaved for a week to finish the costumes. I decided that the fabric did not need to be perfectly sewn together. My sewing trick was that I did not sew sleeves for any of the costumes. I also made it loose it enough to allow my kids to wear long sleeve shirts under the costumes. This made them easier and quicker to make.
For the angel costume, we used bristol boards that we shaped into wings. We used two strips from the white fabric and attached them like straps. My daughter wore it like a backpack. We shaped the pipecleaners into a halo and attached it to the headband.
The red fabric was sewn into a top and skirt for the devil costume. I then attached the devil tail that was purchased at the dollar store at the back of the skirt. And presto... a devil costume was born!
As for the Dorothy costume, the blue/white checkered fabric was made into a top and skirt that matched the character's. This one took a little longer to make because of the suspenders on the top. Other than that it looked just like the character. The basket that was purchased from the dollar store was used for this costume. My daughter was off to see the wizard after we were done!
Part of the the red fabric was used as a skirt for the cheerleader costume. As for the top, we used a white t-shirt we already had at home. To make it look more cheerleader-like, I stitched a letter J (for my daughter's name, Jennifer) into the white shirt. We used the party streamers as her pom-poms. My daughter loved this costume so much that she used for Halloween the next year.
All the hard work paid off when the angel costume won "favourite costume" at my daughter's school. Altogether the costumes cost us a mere $25. Not only did my daughters had fun making the costumes with me, but they had fabulous costumes at the end.
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