It made perfect sense that Elliott would be the Tin Man in our Wizard of Oz crew. He is our most passionate and compassionate child. He always wears his heart on his sleeve.
The foundation of this Tin Man costume was a thrifted knight costume provided by…you guessed it! My mother-in-law.
She also gave Elliott the funnel hat and the ax. I’m telling you, it helps to have a team when you’re costuming!
The joints and shoulder details of the armor gave me the idea that this knight costume could be do double-duty as a Tin Man suit.
I found this silver puffer vest on eBay to pop over the top.
I chose this specific vest because it didn’t have visible zippers or lots of rows of quilting stitches, as I thought these elements might detract from a Tin-Man-esque appearance!
All I needed to do was to make a hood and shoe covers using Simplicity pattern 4133.
However, I discovered that the pattern is no longer available at JoAnn, so I couldn’t snap it up on one of their 5 for $5 sales. So, I went looking for Simplicity pattern 4133 on eBay and got it for a good price. You can also find the pattern on Etsy.
Then, I purchased some silver lamé fabric at JoAnn. If I could go back in time I would have made the hood and shoe covers out of a sturdier material. It turns out that this lamé was basically glorified tissue paper.
The material wore through in several places on the shoe covers after a single wearing, which I thought was lame. Lame lamé. Get it? Sorry! That was really bad.
This also may have been avoided if I hadn’t made the shoe covers as large as I did. I *really* wanted them to entirely cover Elliott’s shoes, but this caused the edges of the shoe covers to rub against the ground and fray.
If I could do things again, I would have also left part of the back seam of the hood unstitched and then sewn on snaps to fasten it.
Why, do you ask? Because we could barely get it over Elliott’s head! He has a huge noggin, like Jeff. In fact, all of our kids do! It’s actually a problem, because we’ve had to give away some of their brand new, adorable clothing items that we couldn’t pull over their colossal craniums. However, the hood *just* barely went on and off, and left Elliott’s ears intact, so I let it be.
It was really fun and satisfying to put this costume together! I liked how the process combined using existing costumes and clothing pieces that could be used for other purposes/characters. I also got to enjoy making a couple, easy pieces from scratch. This is a win-win, in my book!
