Rootin’-est Tootin’-est Cowboy in the Wild, Wild Cantina!

It’s no secret that Halloween is my favorite holiday. The candy, the decorations, the crisp fall weather… but mostly, the crafty possibility. I try to go all out on a costume every year, and 2015 did not disappoint.

Now that my son is getting older, he was able to have input into his costume choice for the first time.  He couldn’t decide between Woody from Toy Story and Star Wars, so I tried to give him both. Introducing… Sheriff Woody Solo! I tried to blend elements from both characters together into the ultimate space cowboy.

There are so many fun details in this costume, and I’ll try to touch on all of them. First was the bandana. Taking inspiration for a traditional red and white printed bandana, I set out to make a Star-Wars inspired version.

The final product turned out better than I could have hoped, especially considering my limited skills in AI. It went off to Spoonflower for printing.

He loved finding all of the characters once it arrived. As always, I was very pleased with the print quality.

A quick trim and hem and it was finished.

For the pants, I wanted to incorporate denim (Woody) and Corellian blood stripes (Han).

The pattern is free from Dana Made It – Kid Pants. I trimmed a bit off of each outer leg seam allowance to make room for a strip of stripes.

I used the flat front option. Scraps of topstitched vinyl were used for the belt and holster.

It’s tough, but if I had to pick my favorite part of this costume, it would probably be these Millenium Falcon buttons. I designed a very simple outline in Illustrator, and had them laser cut by Ponoko. Their service is so easy to use, even for a novice like myself. They make prototyping and pricing out options incredibly user friendly. I was able to get exactly what I wanted, within my budget, after a few small design tweaks. Their customer service is top notch, too! [No one is paying me to gush, I was just honestly impressed.]

After making the costume, I still have four buttons left over. Any suggestions?

On to the shirt. It quickly became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to find the white and red checked fabric that I had in mind. Again, this is a mix — Woody’s shirt is yellow with red checks, and Han’s is white/off white. I improvised with white cotton and a red permanent fabric marker.

The pattern for this shirt is another freebie, Western Style Toddler Shirt from Barmy Beetroot. My modifications were a velcro closure, faux buttons, and lengthening the sleeves from short to long. I also cut the cuffs, collar, and back yoke on the bias.

For the vest, I drew the structure from Han and the cow print from Woody. First, I sketched out the pocket placement from movie stills and figured out rough measurements.

The vest pattern was the free (surprise!) Very Cozy Vest from Made by Marzipan.

The cow print was freehanded with black Sharpie. Doesn’t get any easier than that!

Another favorite detail — Woody’s pull string. A bit of cord from the fabric store coupled with a painted embroidery hoop innard.

Of course, I’ll take any excuse to use my Silhouette Cameo! The belt buckle, spurs, and badge were all designed with the Silhouette software. Each design was cut out of cereal box cardboard twice, then adhered together with my Xyron machine.

I then used the print & cut feature with Silhouette’s printable & adhesive gold foil. Layered al together, it made for sturdy pieces. I used a metallic gold marker around the raw edges to cover up the white from the cardboard.

Here’s a screencap of Woody’s belt buckle, to show where I got my inspiration for the Leia buckle.

Originally I had attempted to make boot covers, but I couldn’t get them to look how I had pictured them. Instead, we picked up a cheap pair of black rain boots, which I decorated with strips of topstitched vinyl and the gold foil spurs.

The finishing touch was the treat bag. I puzzled over it for a week or so, before settling on a mix of Woody’s pal and Han’s sidekick — Slink & Chewbacca. It took some time, but I came up with a design that I liked.

The finished image was printed on Sillhouette’s printable canvas. It was a fast way to finish up, but I wish the colors had been a bit more saturated. It fit the bill, though, and was stuffed full of goodies on Halloween night.

Here are a few more pictures of our cowboy enjoying his costume.

One final detail: the tauntaun hobby horse. Unfortunately it’s no longer available, as it was an exclusive from the 2012 Star Wars Celebration convention. I bought it back then to decorate our son’s nursery. It was great to incorporate it as part of his costume.

So another Halloween is on the books… and I’m already looking forward to next year!

Gimli Costume–Actual Dwarven Size!

It’s been a while. So let’s get right down to catching up on the past year or so!

First up is the crown jewel of my projects for 2014: my son’s Halloween costume. He’ll soon be of an age where he’ll want to make his own costume choices, so until that point, I plan on having some fun. Say hello to Gimli from Lord of the Rings.

It all started with a toddler-sized beard… When approaching a crazy project, I try to tackle the part most likely to fail — and the facial hair was the make or break for this costume. Fortunately I found a great tutorial — that I simply scaled down. I modified the finished beard to snap on to the helm with oversized snaps, as it was the part I figured he’d dislike the most. Spoiler alert — I was right.

From there, it was on to Gimli’s helm. I made changes to this free fleece knight helmet pattern, by adding chain mail-ish stitching on the back, as well as a medallion and cheek straps cut out of felt with my Silhouette Cameo. The designs were freehanded, and based loosely off of movie screenshots.

The tunic was based on Butterick 3244 — a simple fireman’s jacket. The sleeve pattern was chopped into a few pieces to get the look I was going for, and a faux chain mail underlayer was added.

The bandolier/belt was made from a few chopped up belts I found at the thrift store. I glued them together with industrial adhesive, then drilled holes and laced with decorative leather cord for extra reinforcement.

The treat bag is probably my favorite part. I traced a movie still of Gimli’s axe and cut it out of fusible web backed felt on my Silhouette. I created an offset around the original design and cut it out of another color of felt, then mounted the first on the second. It was reinforced with cardboard from a cereal box. I used a strip of felt to gusset the front and back together, and another thrift store belt for the handle.

He was a very good sport about the whole thing, and even wore the beard long enough for us to get a few good shots of the costume all together. For trick or treating and his school’s Halloween parade, he went sans facial hair — a good choice for everyone involved.

It was a great honor for this costume to be chosen as Craftster’s 2014 Costume Contest winner, as well as one of the Best of 2014 in the ‘Epic Challenge Winners of 2014’ category!