hopeful

Be still this librarian mama's heart -- my boys dressed as Thing 1 and Thing 2 for Halloween. Do you remember Thing 1 and Thing 2? They are friends of the Cat in the Hat and make a late entrance in the book to wreak further havoc on the home. They are spirited and silly and they like to pretend they are completely innocent even as they are tearing up the joint...in short, the costumes were perfect for my pair.

We bought red union suits off of Amazon. They were $16 a piece and because I did not permanently attach the logos (see below), the boys can wear them through the winter. And yes, they do have a drop in the back. They are ridiculously adorable and I'm sure they'll show up in a holiday photo shoot or two.

I found the template for the logos on this blog. While my boys don't look nearly as sassy as these sisters, the templates were exactly what I needed. I printed them on fabric paper that you can run through an inkjet printer then cut them to size and whip-stitched them onto the front of the union suits. This made it a bit tricky squeezing the boys into the suits without being able to unbutton them all the way, but we figured it out. After Halloween, I pulled out the stitching, and the suits are as good as new.

The thing I am most proud of are the wigs:


Instead of purchasing blue wigs from the party store (which ran about $20 a piece), I wrapped blue feather boas (which I purchased from Jo-Anns) around old stocking caps and attached them with a hot glue gun. I particularly love how much height the wigs have with this process; Emmett in particular looks like a toddler version of Marge Simpson. As a bonus, the boys had warm hats for trick-or-treating. We'll be living with remnants of blue fuzz for the next few months, but that's okay.

And so, I leave you with memorable words of Theodore Seuss Geisel, who wrote:

When I was seventeen years old, I decided that I wanted to learn to sew. My mom doesn't sew (though she can work wonders with a glue gun and stitch witchery) and we didn't have a sewing machine in the house. So I borrowed a machine and signed up for an introductory class at the now-defunct Minnesota Fabrics. I ended up making a very ugly but well constructed burgundy prom dress that I didn't wear to prom. I was hooked. I got a sewing machine for my eighteenth birthday which I brought to college the next fall. My college sewing consisted of two main areas: 1) making patchwork dresses, backless smock tops, and split cords to clothe me and my hippie friends and 2) working with professional dressmakers and designers as a staff member in the theater department's costume shop, where I got to learn fun things like how to dye spandex, how to use an overlock machine, and how to work without patterns. Between the two, I sewed a lot. College was followed by two years in the Peace Corps, during which I sewed frequently but slowly as I was using my host mother's hand treadle machine. Things slowed down after that: grad school, then a career, then kids.

Three years ago, my in-laws got me a brand spanking new Janome machine. It's amazing. It makes buttonholes and has fifty decorative stitches and it's quiet and classy. I love it. I knew right away that I wouldn't have a lot of time to use it, to which my mother-in-law said, "Well, if you don't have a lot of time to sew, you really need a great machine. She was right. My sewing as of the last four years pretty much consisted of making baby quilts for my newest nieces and nephews and...of course...Halloween.  Which brings me to this post.

When Finn was one year old, I made him a scarecrow costume. I used an official Wizard of Oz pattern and spent way too much time getting it perfectly right. Turned out pretty cute, though.



Now that Emmett is one, I figured I might as well get one more use out of the costume. The inklings of a theme started brewing in my head. Long story short, while the scarecrow costume is ready to go, I'm now making Finn a cowardly lion costume and Iona (my thirteen year old live-in niece) a Dorothy costume.  I found McCall's patterns on sale for 99 cents and picked up the materials yesterday. Late last night, I pulled out my old friend Janome and threw together a Dorothy costume. And you know what? It was really fun. I diverged from the pattern directions pretty quickly, particularly because the pattern called for a pinafore attached to a blouse and I just wanted to make a pinafore. The skirt turned out poofy, the front of the pinafore lays perfectly, and, most importantly, Iona loves it. I'll get to the lion costume some time this week.

Making clothes is not something I can do when I have a few minutes, as I don't have a designated space for my machine and sewing supplies. In some ways, that makes the process so much more rewarding, as I designate time for sewing and focus on the project at hand. Sometimes, you just have to do that. 

Did I mention that my mom is a goddess with a glue gun? Check out my 3rd grade Halloween costume: