Halloween Costume

I am very late getting a post on Halloween. I seldom decorate the house for any holiday. But... I do make my kids' Halloween costumes. My youngest son is 15. He wanted to be Zorro for Halloween. So Zorro he was. A Zorro costume needs a fancy shirt, cape, hat and most of all a mask. The mask was probably the easiest to make and was the very last item I made at 3am Friday morning October 30. Yes, I pulled an almost all nighter getting my son's costume made so he could wear it to school that day.

First the Hat. I used McCalls 4805 and made view C without the feather. I used a bit of gold braid instead. For some reason, it took me 4 days to make it. Of course I have never made a brimmed hat before. Felt, really stiff stabilizer and satin lining with wire in the brim

Next I worked on the blouse. Another renaissance type shirt, this time Simplicity (3758). Slippery satin and lots of gathers and I shorted the ruffles some due to not paying attention to cutting out the main body of the blouse so didn't have enough width on the ruffle. The grommets were fun. I used very old buttons on the sleeves. Zorro picked them out because they looked like ying yang to him. The pattern went together easily, but had a strange way of doing the underarm. It is possible that I just plain screwed it up. But, I kept telling myself that it is just a Costume.

The cape turned out just plain gorgeous. Black velveteen and fully lined with a heavy satin. The cape is very full and swings and twirls nicely. I used another Simplicity pattern (2499). I still need to properly finish the hems as I just serged them to get it done.

For the mask, I did a search on line for half mask patterns. Found one for kids to color and cut out. I simply changed the size of when printing and made a couple of other changes and cut it out of left over felt from the hat. A couple of ribbons sewn to the ends and I was done in 15 minutes, at 3:15 am. Sewing all that black was very hard on the eyes, but don't you think he is quite dashing? Check out more photos at my webshots account: