October 2019 – Sew Frock'n Cute

My oldest son has been begging me to make him a mummy costume this year. For the past week, at least 3 times a day, he asks, “but where’s my mummy?” Each time I tell him “its not ready yet, buddy” and explain that I literally have to make something from nothing. Needless to say, he’s not following. Lol.

Having 2 boys in the house under 5 years old, there’s not a lot of time to devote to my craft. Add 13 chickens and 3 dogs to that mix and you’d think I was losing my head…like a chicken with its head cut off… So what to do? Arrange for a visit to Grandma and Grandpa’s of course! After the kiddos leave the house, there is this period of silence followed by me staring at my phone, catching up on social media, gathering ideas all while stuffing my face and then before I know it, 20 minutes just whizzed by and I’ve done nothing constructive. I then look at my work space, which is sadly placed in the midst of my chaotic kitchen, take a deep breath and then snap a photo because I, and every crafter knows that once the mayhem begins, you can kiss the neat and tidy work space good bye! It was pretty for about 10 minutes. I can dote on my clean work space photo later…

And so it begins! I gather my materials and start processing my ideas for construction. This post is NOT a step by step tutorial but you can borrow concepts to use on your own if you’re looking for ideas. The materials I used for this project include: knit lining, gauze and a 20″ zipper. I took a footless pajama onesie and used that as my pattern guide. Once I cut out the body and sleeves, I began tearing the gauze into about 2-3″ thick strips, just tearing along the cross grain of the fabric. Tearing this fabric is so satisfying by the way! I then arranged the strips how I wanted the final look to appear. Starting with one of the sleeves, I sewed on one strip at a time and placed each strip on the sleeve from the bottom up. This ends up giving the fabric a cascading effect down the garment.

After I have sewn on each strip to the entire arm sleeve, I trim away the excess fabric. I use this method throughout the process of the costume.

Since the costume is essentially a bodysuit, I cut one front panel and two back panels in order to install a zipper. I see lots of mummy costumes for kids and wonder how the heck these tiny humans are going to use the bathroom when they can’t remove the costume without deconstructing it? I have a 4 year old boy, he needs quick and easy access to do his business!

Once all the excess was cut off and the panels were pieced together with the sleeves, it was time to install the zipper! My mother in law had gotten me a narrow zipper foot this past Christmas and I will admit I was excited about it but was also avoiding it like the plague. I hate installing zippers. They are irritating and cumbersome. A few years back I did a Sesame Street costume theme and my only son at the time went as Elmo. I had the worst time installing the zipper into that shaggy, furry fabric. So much that I attached strips of fleece fabric to the panels of the costume and sewed the zipper onto those. BUT this narrow zipper foot sewed like a dream! I pinned once and sewed it right on. No seam ripping, re-aligning and re-pinning. It was flawless. I may have lost my fear of zippers in the process! Woop! Woop!

Before attaching the zipper, I serged the raw edge of the panels. I did this just to give the inside a clean, finished look. You can see that the tail of the zipper is not pinned in the second photo. I ended up cutting off the excess since it was too long. Once the zipper was set in, I sewed the remaining parts of the bodysuit together.