I'll just start out with some fun pictures but at the end I'll put some pics that show a little bit of how I put these things together.
In order for any of this to make sense you have to be slightly familiar with the movie How To Train Your Dragon. To see a 2 min trailer of the movie click HERE.
As always, my love is SUCH A GOOD SPORT for his wife and his kids!!
Now I DID NOT make Shortcake's costume. At one point I was going to make a 3rd dragon costume for her, but we found this one at Goodwill for $10. I may be crazy but I'm not dumb.
These ones I did make. Man it was a lot of work. Self inflicted work I'll admit, but once I started, I couldn't give up and leave them unfinished. I had to see it through.
When E.Mae picked the dragon named "Toothless," we didn't realize just how perfect that dragon was for her. From the moment she wakes up, till the moment she goes to bed, she wears this pink hat. So when she first tired on her costume, she of course had her hat on. At first I started to tell her to take it off, but then we realized it was the perfect addition to her costume! "Toothless" needed some pink gums!
K.Rae's was by FAR the most labor intensive costume I have ever made. There were so many steps in making this dragon come together. (More about those in a minute.) But I was excited to take it on cause it was a challenge.
My original plan was not to worry about "teeth" on this guy. But miss K.Rae found some material and suggested we make teeth out of it. It turned out great and made the costume look awesome.
Ok, some of my "how to's." Where to begin? I went out and bought material for these projects clear back in September! But somehow while thinking I had "plenty of time" I still ended up working on these right up until the day we actually needed them!
Even though both girls were dragons, the dragons they picked were actually quite different. One had eyes set "into" it's head while the other had eyes that were more protruding. One had lots of spikes, the other not so much.
Both of my "dragons started out with a base of hoodie and sweat pants. But there were no orange sweat pants to be found. So we had to order white ones and dye them orange. I hadn't dyed anything since I was a senior in high school. (Dyed my "Woodstock" costume yellow.) Ideally, I think I would have liked a darker orange color, but the fabric itself was kind of funny the way it took to the dye and it just had to do.
Something else I had to figure out how to do was make an "eyeball." I found a ball pattern pdf online and this is what I ended up with. I was actually quite pleased with how it turned out.
This brute also needed LOTS of horns/spikes. No pattern here. Just free handed some spikes on some fabric. I folded my fabric into 4 layers so that I would cut out 4 of each "spike shape." To make a "spike" I sewed together 2 triangleish shaped pieces of fabric and turned them inside out. This made them stand up and keep their shape pretty good so they weren't "floppy."
This picture kind of shows how I constructed the tails. Once again. No pattern. Just 3 triangle pieces of fabric sewn together. For the "monstrous nightmare," I sewed the spikes right into the seams. Then I sewed the 2 outside pieces together, stuffed it with fluff, and tada, a dragon tail.
For the "night fury" I sewed his tail fins into the seam. Yes, I painted that "skull" thing on myself. When you get into the "nitty gritty" of the sewing specifics, these fins were actually slightly more challenging than the spikes. With most sewing projects, you sew "rightsides" together, then turn every thing inside out . . . or right side out . . . I don't know. If you've ever sewn anything you know what I'm talking about.
So imagine this tail, "inside out." Cause that's how it had to be in order for me to sew it. Go ahead, visualize it . . . Ya, I had figure out how to have those 2 big fins crammed up to a tiny little triangle point in order for me to sew them into the seams of the the end of the tail. I ended up rolling them up as best I could and just kind of hoped for the best. Ended up working just fine but it had me stumped for a little while.
Can't forget dragons have wings. I'll admit this is one area that ended up not quite as "glorious" looking as I originally imagined. But it ended up sufficient. Still no pattern to go off of here, so it took me a couple of tries to figure out what "shape" I had to cut out in order to make sure the girls would still have full mobility of their arms. This is what I finally came up with. If I had it to do over again, I would have made them "longer." Not make the straight edge longer. The straight edge was measured to the length of their arm and coat. I would make the distance perpendicular to the straight edge longer. Thus making the wings look "fatter" than they do in this picture. Anyway, that's not very important cause frankly I'm not foreseeing any sane reason for me to be "winging" anything again.
The long straight edge is sewn from the cuff of their sleeves, all the way up to the armpit, then continues down the "waist" to the bottom edge of the jacket.
The rest of the project was completed with lots of safety pins. I've contemplated attaching the the tails and eyes and horns by hand sewing them to the jacket. I probably really should. But for now, the "extremities" are attached with safety pins. LOTS of safety pins.
Then of course we finished up the "monstrous nightmare" by taking her outside with a can of fabric spray paint and added the dark "burnt" look that he is supposed to have.
As far as the 2 viking costumes, most of that was piecemealed together by sever trips to goodwill. I did make my skirt, and our boot fluff cuff things, but the rest was bought one piece at a time.
Like I said, next year, I think we definitely need to take it down a notch. At least in the area of patternless-imgine-it-up-myself-sewing.
BONUS PHOTOS:
This Halloween loving mama was really proud this year. The twins did the carving themselves! In past years they would help with the guts a little bit and pick out a design for me to carve. This year they designed and completely carved it themselves. I loved seeing them enjoy it and feel so grown up.
Shortcake loved EVERY minute of it too. I couldn't believe how long her attention span lasted when it came to scooping those guts out! The twins got tired (and bored) and needed help scrapping out. But not Shortcake. She was totally into it clear up until her pumpkin was completely empty. After that, she had to be right there next to whoever's turn it was with the knife, and threw a fit if she couldn't see.
But man, that was nothing compared to when one of the girls threw her "nose" piece into the garbage can. Holy cow she got so upset! Bawling and carrying on as if she had never been more wronged in her whole 2 years of existence. Man. This house would be such a boring place with out that little person.
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