Evolution of a Halloween Costume

This past week was pretty much all about getting ready for Halloween.

Here's what I was making.  Meet Doc (and his teammate, Blue).

Cutting out the fabric took longer than anticipated so at first I was feeling a little stressed about getting the costume done in time.  But once I got sewing, it went together pretty quickly.

SUNDAY
Realized that for the suggested layout of the pattern pieces, I couldn't have the fabric folded in half.  Ugh.  Cutting out fabric is tedious!

MONDAY
Finished cutting everything out, and after night one of sewing I had this:

TUESDAY
The next night, after we got home from work/school, I had Bennett try it on so that I could mark the hems.  He was so excited that there was a tail!

That same evening, while Chris worked on making dinner, I started working on the head covering.  It's a good thing that I did this while Bennett was awake, because I had to do a couple of adjustments to get it to fit right.  After he went to bed, I finished putting it together and got this:

At which point, I figured I might as well try putting some paint on it.

WEDNESDAY

The  next evening I had Bennett try the whole thing on, including the mittens and foot coverings.  He was excited to see that his head covering (hood? hat?) had "corns".

And then Daddy did a test fit of the yoke. (One must be on all fours like an ox for this part, right?)

After Bennett went to bed I stuffed the costume with bubble wrap and taped it to the drop cloth on my floor so that I could better visualize how it would stand on all fours so that I could get the rest of the paint done. And then every time I walked past my craft room I thought there was something in there. 

I also decided to give my old stage makeup a try.   It didn't go as well as I would have liked.  Maybe because it's about 17 years old?  I also didn't have the best of luck taking it off, so decided it wouldn't work for Bennett.  Instead I turned to Amazon and ordered some face paint.  Yay for Prime shipping!

THURSDAY
Not too much left to do.  I had decided that the mittens I made probably wouldn't be the best, so ran to Target in search of black mittens.  Easier said than done.  So many black mittens have other color on them as well.  I did find some "ski mittens" which have the long arm gaiters.  Tried them on Bennett and he declared them "too big".  Checked at home and found that we did in fact have a couple of other pairs that might work, but Bennett wasn't a big fan of either of them.  Maybe if he's cold enough he'll give in and wear them?

After Bennett went to bed I added some velcro to the hood to keep it on and Chris also did a little more work on the yoke.

FRIDAY
Face paint arrived!  I had it shipped to my work address and the box was sitting on my desk when I walked in.

And then after work/school, we went to Sturbridge for their "Treats & Tricks" event.  Unfortunately we weren't able to attend.  (Hurumph.)  It was a free eent this year and there were too many people trying to attend.  We had left work early to try to beat some of the traffic, but we ended up spending over an hour and a half to drive two miles.  We arrived right at 8 when the event ended.  What was frustrating about it was that the way the roads are in that area, there's really no way to give up and turn around- we were stuck.

SATURDAY
We decided that Bennett should go in costume for our weekly visit.

I'm inclined to say that most people didn't recognize him at first.  Maybe some did?  But after hearing that he was Doc, they then agreed that yes, he did look like Doc.  One of the interpreters was very excited to see that his back was in fact painted like a Randall Lineback. 

Here's mini Doc with the real Doc and Blue behind him.

We tried to get him to work at the cider mill, but he knew Henry was supposed to do it.  (You can see Henry waiting to get hooked up in the next picture.)  Daddy tried to show Bennett how it was done, but he wanted nothing to do with it.

We made our way down to the farm and Victoria loved the costume.  Bennett walked in first and I could tell that she was looking at him trying to figure it out.  And she did!  (Maybe it helped that last week I had mentioned he would be either Doc or Blue?)  But what was even better was when she pulled out her phone and handed it to me so that we could get a picture of him for her so that she could share it with Dave. 

If Dave had been working we likely would have asked him if it would be possible to get a picture of Bennett with the real Doc, but we didn't feel comfortable asking that of any of the others.  Instead we lifted Bennett over a fence to get pictures of him in a field.  We asked him to get down on all fours, but he didn't want to do that.

And here are a couple other pictures from our visit.

And where's the yoke, you ask?  Since it was made from a garden hose Chris tried painting it.  But the paint remained tacky, so we had to skip using it.  Maybe we'll have it ready for Halloween?