A few days ago we celebrated Ash Wednesday. I don’t know how or if you celebrate it in your country but in my town here in Akureyri, Iceland it’s a grown custom for kids to dress up early in the morning, visit the companies in town and sing a song or two and get candy in return. My boys, aged 10 and 6 decided they wanted to dress up as their every day heros, namely Minecraft characters. It was a challenge because they had to be able to move around, get in and out of cars and such and being in a cardboard box isn’t really appropriate for that. Also they had to dress well because it was only about 4°c outside. It’s much easier to dress up when you don’t have to have the snow overall on.
But anyway.. I decided to sew two costumes, ‘a creeper’ and ‘diamond armor Steve’. The look and texture is of course softer than expected of bitmap characters but they did get some attention and were easily recognized in the town. Here’s a slight tutorial for the minecraft costumes. If you have any questions feel free to comment below.
For the costumes I used two blankets, one cardboard box which I cut in pieces, plastic tape, four empty Ritz Crackers boxes, two plastic flowerpots and some kids plastic paint. And ofcourse my sewing machine.
Did I just say flower pots?
Yes, I did. It was tough to figure out how to place the cardboard top onto their heads, so the bottom of the pot is taped to the cardboard and a piece of fabric threaded through the holes in the flower pot and pinned to their cap.
The ‘Creeper’ only had cardboard at the top so it was hard to keep it at place, so I would recommend something more sturdy.
The Diamond armor Steve was made by cutting down, forming and taping together a piece of cardboard paper. I only made the shoulders but made them wide enough for the fabric to stay straight down his body. I could add measurements but its really better to measure your child and make it fit him/her.
The fabric is folded so its a whole piece. The shoulders were closed in the final outcome, not open at the ends. The fabric was sewed together at the sides and glued to the cardboard.
In whole it took two afternoons to make these, they were thrilled and my Daniel, who wore the Diamond Armor Steve costume, was asked for a selfie with various people down town 🙂
Oh and the candy they brought home, best pay I could have imagined 😀
