Mr & Mrs Potato Head Costume

My original plan was to make my son a Popeye costume for Halloween.  I purchased the shirt and fabric for the sailor hat and muscles.  I cut & sewed the hat which didn't turn out at all like I wanted it to but I was gonna make it work, then cut and sewed what was supposed to be the muscles and realized I cut them out wrong.  I wasn't paying attention to what direction I layed the pattern on the knit fabric and there was no stretch to it so it hit the trash.  I hadn't bought enough fabric to try them again and decided I needed something a little simpler.

Enter, Mr Potato Head.  My son loves Toy Story and has since he was 3 months old... Yes you read that right, 3 months.  He used to lay on his play mat and sqeal and kick watching Toy Story on our little TV.  While watching it the other day I thought it would have made a quick, easy, and really cute costume for Grant.  When Popeye wasn't working I knew I had to go with Potato Head.

I free handed the body, eyes, mouth, nose, ears, and mustache and cut them out of felt.  After seeing how cute it turned out and realizing how simple it was to make I thought I had to make my niece, Sophie, a Mrs. Potato Head costume so they could match.

Here are what the face pieces look like:

 

If I was a really great blogger or a little more tech savvy I would have these attached to a PDF link so everyone could print them off.  Unfortunately I have no clue how to do that (wish so much that I did) so I uploaded them as pictures just so everyone could get the general idea,

 

 

In case you're wondering, yes I do know the above pattern is upside down, but with a nearly 2 year old by my side amazed by the noises my scanner/printer was making and wanting  to push every button on it, I was not about to attempt scanning it right side up.

 

To make the body I first did some measurements.  I measured from shoulder to shoulder, then from neck to how long I wanted to costume to be.  I made mine come to just above the knee.  I used a water soluble pen to make all the markings and the body shape, that way if I messed up I could easily erase my mistakes.

 

I cut the shoulder pieces of the body on the fold of the felt so I would'nt have to sew the front and back together at the shoulder.

 

 

Mrs. Potato Head's purse/treat bag:

 

 

I did not sew the front and back together at the sides because when I tried them on I realized they would be too constricting.  So instead I cut a piece of tan felt about 3 inches wide and 3 inches tall and stitched it on either side.

 

 

This made the costume very easy for the kids to run, play, and move around easily.

 

I didn't want to mess with buttons, elastic, or velcro on the back so I just made a 2 inch slit down the neck to make it easy to go over each of their heads and left it like that.  I really wanted these costumes to be as little fuss as possible for both me and the kids.

 

 

With 2 little ones running around both of these costumes only took me an afternoon (that's stopping and starting of course).  If the kiddos would have been asleep the whole time, or not so interested in what I was doing they probably would have taken a couple hours to complete which is pretty good considering I had to make the whole pattern myself.

 

I am so thrilled with how they turned out.  We took both Grant and my neice to Boo at the Zoo and they had a ball.  I heard a lot of people comment on how cute their costumes were.  Of course, knowing I made them, I was pretty proud of myself and my meager sewing capabilities haha.