This year my littlest one was a Baby Bumble Bee for Halloween. Since she's just over a year I'm still able to have full creative control over her costume. Who knows what she'll want to be next year. Here's a quick rundown of how I created this cute sweatshirt costume and a bonus clip art freebie for those of you who stick through to the end of the post :)
Up here in New Hampshire Halloween night is always on the chilly side so I like to plan layers into the costumes. This Baby Bumble Bee costume started with a black hoodie sweatshirt and I paired it with black fleece lined leggings (not shown here).
For the Bumble Bee hoodie I used:
- black sweatshirt
- recycled golden yellow t-shirt from the college days
- contrasting thread for creating ruffles
- matching yellow thread for attaching them
- 1-1/2" sheer silver wired ribbon (also on hand in my scrap ribbon tub)
- handy dandy sewing machine
I cut across the bottom of the t-shirt to create 1-1/2" strips of material.
Then I ran the strips through the sewing machine using the basting ruffle technique, sewing about 1/4" from the top edge of the strip. There are a couple different ways you can ruffle easily. I Heart Nap Time has a nice post about the techniques. I ended up using the basting technique for most of them and the machine basting for the rest. The ruffle wasn't as dense as when I hand ruffled it but it worked for me.
I pinned and sewed strips of the ruffles across the front and back of the sweatshirt. I started at the shoulders so that there was a double width of ruffles right at the top (one facing forward and one facing back). I sewed right across the front pocket because whatever rocks she might be trying to sneak into my house were not going to be stashed away in this costume.
After sewing the ruffles I created a t-shirt pom pom using strips of the remaining material. Brit & Co. has a good visual of how to create t-shirt pom pons. I used fabric glue to adhere these to the hood of the sweatshirt.
To make the wings I dug up some sheer silver wired ribbon from my stash and loosely folded it on itself a couple of times. I tightly tied a thin ribbon across the middle to bunch it and then added some fabric glue to the thin ribbon to keep it from coming undone. To attach these new wings to the sweatshirt I used a safety pin just in case it was uncomfortable for the peanut.
I mean, seriously, could she be any cuter?
And just for hanging in with me all the way down the page, here is a FREE clip art graphic inspired by my little Baby Bumblebee. Click on the image below to download the ZIP file.
See you soon!
