Mario Madness: Halloween Part 1

Blogging Halloween 2013 in January 2014.  Better than never, right?

I truly love making costumes.  I've heard the argument that it isn't worthwhile to make a costume that will be worn one night and then tossed aside forever.  I'm sure one year I will probably feel this way. (I know some kids like to play dress up so those costumes aren't discarded.  My Allie-gator has never rolled that way.  Maybe my Little Bear will when she's older.)  However, this was not the year.  The last couple of years our Halloween festivities have included being at Walt Disney World so I have made costumes for the whole family while we visit Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party.  That alone would make it worth the time and effort.  Add to that the fact that I actively seek out costume wearing opportunities for my kids.  Library story times, community Halloween trails, anything where it looks like they can wear their costumes I make an effort to take them to enjoy.

My son is now seven.  This means he now has not only an opinion about Halloween costumes, but that he has more of an interest in having a "cool" costume to show his friends.  He requested a Skylander costume.  I had an idea for Tree Rex costume I was all set to start on.

Pic from wired.  This is the same look Bear gives when she misses her nap.

However, he finally, out of nowhere, decided he wanted to be Race Car driver.  No idea where that came from, but I was going with it.  On a Saturday we visited Joann Fabrics to pick out the fabric.  I was debating satins (manly satins) when Al saw the display of Halloween Patterns.  What should his wandering eyes see, but.....MARIO!

McCalls M6814 View A

Al loves video games.  Almost all video games.  I'm quite the fan myself.  I was immediately on board with this idea.  When I was a kid we had a Nintendo and one year my oldest and middle brothers went as Mario and Luigi and I was Princess Peach.  This was something easily made with the very cheap and plentiful broadcloth in easy to find blue and red.  Plus, the pattern looked simple.  (When you see the costume for my daughter in part 2 you may understand why that was important this year.)

I didn't take my usual dozen pictures of the costume from every angle.  I really had to look to find one.  We scored some fake facial hair at Target dollar area so we added a mustache and eyebrows.  My son has a thing about paint anywhere on him (no face paint, no temporary tattoos, etc.) so the fake hair worked for us because he could take it off easily.  Here's the best picture I could find:

Not pictured:  Pirates that had raided our hotel room and left that mess.

The outfit has the zipper in the front in the center of the jumpsuit.  I found, even with my zipper foot, this was hard for me.  Unlike a shirt of a skirt there isn't an opening on both sides.  The zipper also goes from the blue to the red so I had to either switch the threads while I was sewing or stick with one of them for the whole process.  I went with the red because it would look better on the top half.  I felt awkward about it though.  Even from a distance you can see the red thread on the blue.  The bib instructions were a little confusing for me.  I liked watching the hat come together.  On the pattern it just has a circle (trademarks, man) so I had to free hand the M. 

Here's a big ol' mistake I made.  When hemming the pant legs I wanted to put it on my son to get the right length.  I was working hard into the night.  My son was already dressed for bed (some of you can see where this is going).  I measured without making him wear full pants or, more importantly, shoes.  Once we got to WDW and he put on his costume it became apparent that it had been hemmed WAY too short.  Luckily, I had packed him some black boots that went passed his ankles so it was passable.  There were like at least three other Marios at WDW that night (and they all greeted one another every time they passed one another with "Hey, Mario!") and, in my very biased opinion, I think his costume looked just as good as their store bought ones....from afar.

When we came back to TX it was reasonably chilly for Halloween so he wore jeans instead of the shorts he wore on vacation.  I buy him boot cut jeans so he had about an inch or two of jeans passed where his jumpsuit pants ended.  He still didn't care.  He just liked showing his friends his costume and shouting "It's a me, Mario!  I'm here for some candy!".

I still really liked this pattern.  My kid was really happy with it (which is most important).  If I was going to make it again I think I would try to alter it so that the pants and top of the jumpsuit snap or Velcro together so if he had to go to the bathroom he wouldn't have to take the whole thing off.  I might skip the zipper and go with Velcro there as well.  The Buzz Lightyear costume from a couple of years ago used Velcro for the jumpsuit and I liked how that came together.  Just for my personal preference I might put elastic in the cuffs of the sleeves.  My favorite part of this outfit was the hat.  Which I wore on my own head whenever he wasn't looking.