Halloween 2015 - Batgirl Costume

It's official - the princess years are over.  

We weren't doing the princess thing for Halloween last year either but in the last year any vestiges of princess play have disappeared entirely.  I'm not really sad - we were in that phase long enough.  This year it's all about Legos and DC Comic superheroes.

Introducing...  Bat-girl! 

This was a fun costume to make, mostly consisting of fleece accessories and embellishments on store bought clothes.   The base is a black long sleeve t-shirt and black leggings.  

The shirt got a fleece bat symbol.   I'm sure she'll wear the shirt to school on its own once Halloween is over, which is a nice bonus.  

I made a utility belt from fleece.  It closes with velcro in the back and has a bat symbol at the center front with two utility pockets on each side.  The pocket flaps kept sticking up so they are held closed with a velcro dot.  Grace reports the pockets are the perfect size for carrying tissues and hiding pieces of candy.  :)  

The arm cuffs were pretty fun to make.  They are fleece for the most part.  The claws have a layer of stiff interfacing in the middle to make them stand out straight.  The cuffs close with velcro and simply go over the shirt sleeve.  I made the velcro meet 'wrong sides together' rather than overlapping to help those cool flanges stick out from the arm.  

The leg cuffs/fake boots are yellow fleece tubes attached to her leggings.  I shaped the front into a point and attached the cuffs around the top of the yellow.  They hang loosely from that row of stitching - not attached at the ankle so that they can hang nice and cover the top of her shoes.  

The cape I had made over the summer (and apparently forgot to blog about) so that was ready to go.  

The helmet was tricky.  Grace specifically wanted a helmet rather than a mask.  I'm not thrilled with how it turned out but didn't want to spend forever and a day on it either since the other parts of the costume will likely get more wear.  I started with a tube shape that fit her head, tweaked the tube shape to make the bat ears (gluing in a piece of craft foam to make them stick up nicely), then fiddled around for far too long trying to get the eyes and nose to look decent.  I couldn't really get the part around the eyes/nose to fit tighter and closer to her face, but oh well.  Its all soft fleece so its comfortable and it gets the general 'Batman' theme across.   A bit of elastic holds it taut in the back.  We did a trick-or-treat activity yesterday in the windy cold weather and she wore the helmet for two hours straight both trick-or-treating and playing at the park so it must be comfortable enough and it kept her ears nice and warm.  

Here she goes... off to save the world - or at least second grade - from evil villains!