Happy Friday + Power to the Unicorn

Happy Friday! Hello everyone, K here! Every year there’s a Halloween party at my school. Everyone dresses up in their Halloween costumes and comes for food and games (the fifth graders make a haunted house too). This year my mom made me an awesome unicorn costume with a rainbow mane and horn. I can’t wait for next year!!!

Haiku by K

Rainbow horns and mane!
Power to the unicorn…
Happy halloween!

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Well, that’s a hard act to follow, but I thought you might want a few more details about the costume?

I am dubbing this the world’s most expensive unicorn costume.

Back in late September, I was cruising through Fred Meyer (similar to Target here in the Pacific Northwest) and saw a costume that looked strikingly like the one you see above. For $14.99, I was ready to insert my debit card into the nearest reader and call it a day.

However. My child was oddly insistent that I make her a costume because it’s a “tradition.”  Not one to pass up a tradition, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

Goodwill was the surprising source for the horn and the wigs that became the mane and tail. They were actually new and were probably slightly less expensive than buying them elsewhere, but one wig alone cost the same as the entire costume at Fred Meyer.

A hooded onesie was what I needed to make, and I rooted around my existing pattern stash to see what I could hack together. I remembered the puffy jacket I’d made earlier in the year from Puperita’s Tiger Hoodie pattern and knew that would be a good starting point. I decided to frankenstein the hoodie pattern with a self-drafted pant pattern based on one of her pajama bottoms. Here’s the first prototype which we call her Kermit onesie:

The fit was pretty good though she wanted the inseam to be raised a bit which was an easy fix. Then there was the issue of ears. A few years ago I went on a hat-making bender and what made them an instant hit were the bear ears. I made K a version here. The pattern was from the Oliver + S Little Things to Sew book, and with a little futzing about, I was able to replace the Tiger Hoodie hood with a modified version of the bear hat. Voila, the Miss Piggy vest:

It’s possible that K loves the Kermit onesie and the Miss Piggy vest more than the unicorn costume, but that’s neither here nor there.

I felt that bling was important for a unicorn. My mom had brought me an insane gold lamé flouncy dress a while ago, and I kept it in the bin with other fabrics fit for costume-making. It came in handy for the ears and “hooves” though they didn’t hold up well at all. You can already see the gold filaments sproinging in that image above. K wore the costume twice: the first time for the school Monster Mash and the second time on Halloween proper, but by Halloween the hooves were a disgrace.

I bought 4 yards of white fleece just in case I made a mistake and couldn’t believe it when I used up almost the entire yardage just for one version. K must be taking steroids! Thank goodness that I didn’t make any obvious errors. It’s a costume, after all, so I wasn’t too concerned about prettifying the raw edges and such.

I sandwiched the tail wig between the back center pieces, and hand-stitched the mane onto the hood. I had a momentary loss of composure when I couldn’t find the hot glue gun for the horn, but there it was right where I put it under 19 tons of fabric.

Do I wish I’d gone the store-bought route instead? Hmmmmm…I would have saved a lot of $$ and time, but the look on K’s face when she saw the completed costume was priceless. She got so many compliments that she was positively luminescent and I have to admit, she looked pretty darn magical. Oh well, I better start saving up for next year’s costume…

Have a happy weekend, my friends! See you next week!