Making Halloween Costumes Without Spending Money, Part 1

This year, I challenged myself to make the girls' Halloween costumes without spending any money on them.  And this could have been really easy, except that they had already decided what they were going to be. So instead of raiding the costume and dress up clothes and putting something together, I have to actually make the costumes that we agreed upon previously. In our family, we like a good Halloween costume theme.  We've done Goldilocks and the three bears, Alice in Wonderland, Japanese kimonos, etc. This year will be no exception. The theme: sea creatures. And while a mermaid is not technically a sea creature since it is not technically real, it still fits the theme. So here is the first in a three part series: How I made a mermaid tail.

This one is Leah's costume, and Leah gets cold easier than anyone else in the family. So I knew I wanted to make her mermaid tail as warm as I could.  Luckily, I had about a yard of orange fleece in my sewing scraps from who knows when and what.  Originally I was just going to use the fleece, but then came upon a package of unopened curtains in this beautiful shade of blue. That's right, curtains.  We have had these curtains in the package for about four years now, and while I have wanted to put them in the girls room forever, for whatever reason we haven't.  So I put them to good use for the costume. 

I had found some really cute ideas online about how to make  a mermaid tail out of really pretty sparkly fabric, but once i committed to not spending anything on it, I had to go it alone. No pattern. The other thing is, I'm not great at sewing. So in figuring out how this would come together I probably ripped out as many stitches as I put in. But eventually, it all worked out. I started out by tracing Leah's lower half onto a roll of newsprint. From there, I cut pieces from both the fleece and the curtain fabric. Then after a lot of trial and error, I got the blue stitched over the orange and left the bottom unfinished so I could attach the tail fin. I also left a bit at the top to fold over to look like that part at the top of a mermaid's tail that folds over (whatever that's called).

The tail fin was challenging, because I wasn't sure how to make it look like a fin and not just extra fabric. I had some leftover elastic thread from another project and decided to try it on this. Elastic thread gathers the fabric together as you sew, resulting in a ruffly look.  I sewed a bunch of straight seams of it down my tail fin pieces and this is what we ended up with. Not really tail fin-ny enough yet.

Next I finished the edges of the tail fins, cutting more off the bottom to get the upside down V shape that I wanted. I then had to sew them into the body of the tail.  After a first attempt I tried it on Leah and realized she couldn't walk because it was too tight at the base.  So I removed those stitches and sewed it open further up the leg on one side so the poor girl will be able to move while Trick or Treating.  I also had left the side of the top open so she can get into it easier, so I attached a ribbon piece on each side for the closure (and since I was spending no money, I couldn't buy matching ribbon... oh well).

At this point, I decided it needed some dressing up, and hot glued some sequins on the front. This was tricky, because the thin blue material let the hot glue seep onto the fleece below, so I had to insert some cardboard between the layers so they wouldn't stick, but also had to keep lifting the blue layer so it would stick to the cardboard. But it worked out in the end.

Here's a picture of the final product.  I wanted it short enough that she wouldn't trip on it when walking, but I wish now that it was a little longer. For the real costume we will be adding some shell necklaces and flowers in her hair.

The whole point of this challenge is not to deprive my kids of really cool Halloween costumes, but to try harder to use what we already have instead of going out and buying something new.  I hope this challenge will help me to get more creative in my use of things and help me to learn to use old things in new ways.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for Part 2!