Well, I finally finished the childrens’ Halloween costumes. Our eight year old girl is Mary (from Mary had a Little Lamb) or Little Bo Peep. The 19 month old is the little lamb. Our seven year old boy is Darth Vader. And, our little three year old, here, wanted to be a bat, ever since a real bat found a way into into his bedroom a few months ago.
This was the easiest of the costumes to make. We used hand-me-down black long underwear shirt, and pants. We have tried all kinds of long underwear over the years, and we like Duofold, the best. You can find these at Sports Authority. And, sometimes, on Amazon.com. And, then we used less than 1 yard of black fabric, and 1 piece of black felt. I purchased the least expensive type of black fabric I found (I think it is a plastic derivative, and was about $2 a yard). But, if you don’t frequent the fabric stores, I think you could cut out wings from a black garbage bag. I made a template for the mask, and will upload it here.
The great thing about this costume is that it is easy to make, and comfortable to wear. Our little guy wore it practically all day, for the Halloween parade, and then while playing in the backyard. I did not attach the wings to the pants (only the shirt), and I think this made it more wearable.
What you’ll need:
1 black pants, and black long sleeved shirt
1 yard black fabric
Baby pins, or needle and thread to attach the wings to the shirt
1 template for the bat mask: bat_mask_template.pdf
1 piece of black felt, or ability to print mask template on cardstock
What to do:
To make the 2 bat wings, you will first need to take a few measurements. The top width of the wing will be the length of the shirt’s arm. Measure the shirt’s arm, from armpit to cuff. This will be the width of the wing. (For example, I cut mine only 12 inches for our 3 year old).
The top-down length of the wing will be the length from the armpit to your child’s knee. Now, you can cut out the wings from the fabric using these measurements. Draw 1 wing on the fabric using a white chalk, crayon, or other light pencil. You know your width, your length, and draw the curves/points by hand. (To give myself a little extra fabric to work with for sewing wings to the shirt, I added 1 inch seams to the top and side of the wings before cutting them.)
You can sew the wings onto the shirt with rough large stitches. It does not need to be perfect because you will remove the wings after you are done with the costume. (This took me about 10 minutes total). You could also use baby pins to pin the wings onto the shirt.
For the bat mask, you can can print the bat mask template, provided here, on a heavy cardstock (it needs to withstand the pressure of string running through it to tie around the head). Or, what I did here, is I printed the template on regular paper, traced it onto a piece of black felt, and cut out the mask from the felt. I then made two small slits (do not make holes/just tiny slits) on each end. I tied two long scrap pieces of black fabric through each slit to tie around the head.
