I am so excited to share this tutorial with you! (Because being crafty and thrifty at the same time makes me giddy!) I am about to show you how, with some supplementary bias tape, you can make not one but TWO aprons and TWO caps out of a fifty cent pillow case!

Behold, the pillowcase! I’m telling you, this is the stuff that dreams are made of. I chose this particular pillowcase for this project because I liked the piping trim that was close to the edge. I thought this would make a nice detail on the pilgrim caps.

After cutting off this decorative edge to make the Pilgrim caps, I took a seam ripper to the side and bottom seams of the pillowcase to open it up.

And, here it is. Now it became one, larger, rectangular piece of material.

I measured and marked how long I wanted each apron to be and drew a line using my favorite, Dritz Disappearing Ink Marking Pen and a ruler. *Disclaimer* I am an Amazon Services LLC Associates Program member. Any purchases made through my Amazon links will earn me a small commission. I am careful to only promote products that I personally use and love!

Then, I cut along this line to create two apron panels. One was for Emma, the other was for Eliza.

Next, I decided to make Eliza’s apron a little narrower than Emma’s so that they would have the same amount of fullness, in proportion to their sizes. This is totally overkill, but I am persnickety like that! Feel free to ignore this part.

I connected my lines and blended them together to make one, long, straight line for cutting. This Draft N Cut ruler is another one of my standard tools. It helps me to keep the pieces I am making square and with straight edges. Snip, snip!

Did you think I was going to throw away that little trimmed bit of material? Well, you should get to know me a little bit more before making such a crazy assumption! I turned that strip of fabric into the waistbands for the aprons. I also serged around all the raw edges.

You don’t have to serge your raw edges, but one reason I really like to do so is because I can use the stitching as a 1/4 inch hem guide. This helps me to speed up my sewing because I don’t have to measure and pin for every single step. So, here you can see that I folded the sides of the apron over, one time, using the serging as a guide. Then, I stitched them down.

Next, I folded each apron panel and waistband in half to mark their centers. I pinned the edges of the apron to the edges of the waistband and matched the centers.

This begins the process of subdividing the excess material in the apron panel to gather evenly into the waistband. You could make the gathers with a large running stitch and eyeball making them even. However, I like the assurance of symmetry that this folding and pinning process gives me.

You can see how I kept portioning the material into smaller and smaller sections.

Here’s a top view of the gathers.

More pinning…

Even more pinning…You can see how I would match the center of the next bit of waistband to the middle of this bit of the apron. The more pins you use, the more you can control exactly where each gather will lie.

I think that’s enough pins!

Next, I sewed a 1/4 inch seam to bind the apron to the waistband. Once again, I used the serged edge of my material as a guide for that 1/4 inch.

Here’s a top view of the stitched gathers.

I folded the side seams over another 1/4 inch by rolling them over themselves. I stitched them down.

Now, the sides of the aprons were totally enclosed with no raw edges and no serged edges to be seen.

Time to bust out the bias tape! I used Wrights White Double Fold, 7/8 Inch Wide Quilt Binding bias tape to make the apron strings.

After determining how long I wanted the apron strings to be, I folded the waistband of the apron over the bias tape. The bias tape acted as a stiffener inside the waistband. I left long tails of the bias tape at each end to form the apron strings.

I opened up the bias tape at the ends of the apron strings and used the Draft n Cut ruler to help me mark and cut straight edges.

Snip, snip!

I marked a 1/4 inch from the edge of the ends of each apron string. I stitched this down with the bias tape opened.

I had designed the finished width of the waistbands to be 1 inch, so they just barely wrapped around the bias tape. I pinned the material over the bias tape. Then, I hand-stitched the waistband down on the backside of the apron, using an invisible stitch. My, what a lovely thumbnail I had. (Stick with me long enough, and you will see how rough I am on my hands.)

To finish the aprons, I stitched down each apron string so that the ties would remain folded and so the raw edges at the end would be encased.

I sprayed each apron down with Heavy Starch from the Dollar Tree and ironed them.

I gave Eliza’s apron a deeper hem so that it would fit her at about the same length as Emma’s would land on her. More of that proportion pickiness! I can let the hem out as Eliza grows.

Here are the finished aprons! I will share how to make the caps in my next post!

*History snob sidenote* Pilgrim women and girls would have probably only worn white, linen aprons for Sunday best. They would have worn sturdier, colored wool or linen aprons for their everyday work. So, you can decide if you want to make Sunday or everyday aprons. I went the Sunday route to create a more iconic, Pilgrim look.

Hello there! If you read my first two posts about making Pilgrim skirts from pillowcases and felt overwhelmed, don’t worry! There is always an easier way to make something.

It is almost impossible to find existing long skirts for girls, especially ones that can work for historical costumes. However, you can easily alter a woman’s skirt, like this black, wool, vintage one. It is midi length on me, but long enough to nearly reach the floor on Emma.

I simply had Emma try on the skirt. I pinched the extra material in the waistband until it fit snug against her waist and then safety pinned it. I could have stopped there and just let her wear the skirt with the safety pin, but I am going to caution against this for three reasons:

1: Safety pins can pop open and stab the wearer.

2: The material can work its way into the coil at the base of the safety pin and form a hole into the material.

3: Vintage clothing is especially fragile (even if it doesn’t look like it is) and can rip around a pin hole, especially if the material is under a bit of strain from the wearer’s activity. (Ask me how I know…)

So, I used the safety pin merely as a place marker and replaced it with stitches. Look at the photo, above, and you can see the hand stitches I made in the waistband. They are a bit difficult to see, being black-on-black, but they are right above my fingertip. This alteration only took a few minutes!

I could have tapered this stitch line further down into the skirt and formed a dart. However, I didn’t think this was necessary for a quick costume.

I altered this skirt for Emma to be a Pilgrim in our annual Classical Conversations home school celebration, called “Night of the Arts”. This was back in the spring, and it gave me the idea to make even more Pilgrim costume pieces for our kids. I was able to borrow a white cap and an apron for Emma, back then. However, I realized that it was time for me to make some of our own. People regularly ask me if they can borrow pioneer costumes, etc, and I never have hats or aprons! Accessories are what tie outfits together. They really help to identify a character or a particular historical period.

So, stay tuned for my next post. I will show you how to make easy and inexpensive historical aprons!

 

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!

 

 

Not even Wicked Witches can live without some cute companionship. So, little Annika was my baby Flying Monkey.

Our Wizard of Oz book was a handy reference when I wondered what color our Flying Monkey should be.

Alright, grey it is! One of the good things about having lots of kids and saving their clothes in an untold number of apple boxes is that, well…I always have lots of clothes to peruse for their costume potential! It’s also nice that we’ve had both boys and girls, because this boosts my options.

We don’t have many grey clothing items for our baby girls, but we do for the boys! I remembered this cute, grey cardigan that went to an outfit I bought when Elliott was a baby.

I dug further into our 9-month Baby Boy box and found a grey, long-sleeve onesie. I decided that Annika could wear it backwards to hid the graphic on its front.

Grey, ruffle leggings and grey socks completed the main part of the monkey costume. Now for the accessories that would add the magic to this ensemble!

I already had this grey beanie hat from the Dollar Tree. I also already had some scraps of grey fleece fabric for the ears.

I cut four monkey ear shapes from the fleece (two for each ear).

I took the four ear shapes and stacked them into sets of two. I stitched around the edges of each set, using the edge of my presser foot as a guide. Then, I sewed the two layers together with a U-shape in their middles, to add some extra ear-detail. As you can see, they are not perfect mirrors of each other. I did this in a huge hurry! Next, I pinched a small pleat in the middle of each ear edge and stitched together to create some dimension to the ears. The final step was quickly tacking the ears to the sides of the beanie cap, by hand, with needle and thread.

Now for the wings! I saw this funky, little bat-wing thing at the Salvation Army thrift store. Then, I walked past it. Then, I walked back and threw it into my cart. It was $1.00. I still have no idea what this thing really is. It might be a dog costume cape! It has a bit of Velcro at the wing tips that may have been designed to fasten at the neck of a costumed canine!

Whatever this thing is, I needed to turn it into wings, so I gave it a skeletal support: Enter a wire coat hanger, a wire cutter and some pliers! I cut the top off the hanger, straightened it, and then re-shaped it to correspond with the wing shape.

I created large hooks at each wing tip. Then, I hand-stitched around the wire near the top of each hook and at each angle point in the wire and in the center of the wings. The wire scoots around quite a bit, but the large hooks keep the wire from slipping all the way out of the stitching.

At this point, all the costume pieces were ready! If I had more time, maybe I would have also made a tail and a vest and a little fez hat to be more faithful to the design of movie monkey costumes. However, I never have more time, and I am pleased that these simple pieces were able to achieve the overall look I was going for!

Here’s our baby monkey!

One great thing about re-purposing clothes as costumes is that it’s easy to design the layers around how warm or freezing it happens to be on Halloween!

So, you may have noticed that I already had everything I needed to make these costumes except for the wings! So, the moral of the story is that you should probably be like me and keep everything you own that has costume-making potential. I mean, I have to justify my possession of at least a dozen apple boxes full of fabric, somehow. Add those to all the aforementioned boxes of children’s clothing, and, well…Our basement is like Smaug’s lair. Except it’s full of fabric, clothes and sewing materials, not jewels. I guess that makes me the dragon guardian, but I’m the friendly kind that likes to share. Whenever I go down there, the chorus to Madonna’s “Material Girl” takes on a whole new meaning. Oh, boy, I need help!