count on mom (part 1)

This year's Halloween costume was a no-brainer.

Malcolm is borderline obsessed with "The Count" from Sesame Street, and The Count's familiar garb seemed like something I could feasibly recreate at home.

First, I searched local stores (and the internet) high and low for black straight-legged sweat pants and a solid black sweatshirt. Both were a bit harder to find than I had anticipated (and more money than I'd typically spend for a article of clothing for my boy), but eventually Old Navy and an online kids' clothing warehouse had what I was looking for. The sweatshirt turned out to be a hoodie, which wasn't my first choice, but in the end, gave the costume a bit more character ...

But more on that later ...

Now, on with the tutorial:

Embellishing the sweatshirt to look like a suit coat and dress shirt underneath began with a few key supplies ... Mainly felt in various colors, fabric scissors, and a hot glue gun.


I started by making patterns out of notebook paper (as I typically do with this sort of project) and arranging them on the sweatshirt to "see" how things would look. Once I was satisfied with the size and placement, I cut the shapes I needed from the appropriate felt colors and laid them out to be sure I liked what I saw ...


Once I was satisfied, I pieced together the red and yellow sash and bow tie with the felt and lots of hot glue.

The bow tie was created with three strips of felt. The first two were folded in half and pinched in the middle with hot glue (as shown below) ... Each would serve as a single side of the bow tie.


Next, I trimmed away the extra felt on the "bad" ends and glued the two halves of the bow tie together in the middle. I used another strip of white felt to wrap up the glued ends (now middle of the tie) and create that familiar bow tie shape.


Then I put (and glued) all the little details (the bow tie, sash, and jacket lapels) together on the white "shirt" piece I had trimmed. This enabled me to make one removable piece (since I spent so much money on the sweatshirt, I wanted to be able to remove the felt and use it as normal clothing later) that could then be hand stitched to the front of the sweatshirt and easily removed after Halloween had passed.

Lastly, I created some purple ears. They were glued and pinched (similar to the bow tie pieces) to create a more three dimensional shape, then hand stitched to the hood of the sweatshirt.



And, behold!

The final product and first component of Malcolm's Count Costume ...


That's one (one!) good-looking costume!

Ah! Ah! Ah!