Make: "Where the Wild Things Are" Halloween Costume

*Note from Cat: Before we get to Betsy's "Make" for today, I need to tell all of you that she is posting more fun costumes she's created for her son Henry over the years on the February 13 Creative blog. We're talking a bonafide African pygmy hedgehog made of TOOTHPICKS, a real working Ipod and more... You've just got to click here to see!

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by Designing Mom "Make" Contributor Betsy

Where the Wild Things Are" is enjoying yet another moment in the limelight these days, thanks to the upcoming movie (out this Friday... looks amazing!). For Henry's 3rd Halloween, I devised this simple Max costume... and Henry was of course happy to play the part!

Materials and general tips:

• white felt (2-3 big squares)
• cotton cap with under-chin tie (I think maybe these only come in baby sizes, but they’re super stretchy.)
• black raffia
• embroidery needle
• regular sewing needle and white thread
• white long-john style pajama bottoms and white turtleneck
• feather boa
• gold paper crown
• white lace-up shoes

I made this eons ago, so I don’t have step-by-step photos, templates and instructions like we normally aim to provide. Fortunately, this one’s really straightforward. I’m super messy about Halloween costumes. I figure: it’s dark out, it’s one night, and he’s a kid... I’m not going for long-wearing craftsmanship here!

• I cut longish lengths of black raffia and used the embroidery needle to thread them through the cap (near the chin), for the whiskers. If you want to make the whiskers more stiff, I suppose you could try using something like hairspray or spray starch, But Max’s whiskers are pretty messy, so I just let these flop!
• I cut large pointy ear shapes from the felt and affixed them to the back of the cap (using needle and thread). You want them to be big enough to show above the crown, or flop out the sides a bit.
• I cut claw shapes from the felt to fit Henry’s hands and feet. I actually stitched the felt closed around his wrists because I was too lazy to sew on snaps, but snaps would be an improvement! For his feet, I just poked a couple of holes into the tops of the claw shapes and used the shoelaces to attach them to the tops of his shoes.
• The boa I found for the tail was on the thin side, so I doubled it up and used a couple quick stitches to affix it to the back of his pants at the waistband.
• Pretty much everything in this costume was re-usable, which made the minimal cost even
• more worthwhile. (Mom gets a feather boa out of the deal. ; )

Let me know if you decide to give this a try for your little Wild thing. I'd love to see photos!
Happy Halloween!