How To Make A Monsters Inc Boo Costume :)

So I decided to post a blog specifically on how I made the Monster's Inc Boo Costume. First let's talk about how this even came to be, making the costume and all. I was going to have Alexis be a bumble bee or ladybug, but everyone kept telling us she looked like boo, so I decided to just make the costume :)

So my background in sewing was limited to a class I took my freshman year in high school. I made 2 quilts with different fabric and sewing patterns, a pair of shorts, a shirt, and a purse. I got an A in the class so I guess it wasn't too bad. So I searched the internet to see if I could find a tutorial on how to make the costume. I found this website. I followed this for the most part except for using a different purple fabric, making an undershirt, and I didn't make the hood as big. When I started this project, I thought that I would do my best and hopefully it would turn out ok, but I definitely surprised myself with how great it turned out :)

Here is how I did it:

First I bought the fabric, I went off of what I saw on the website, aside from choosing different fabric for the suit and the fabric for the shirt. The Fabric total as well as safety pins, velcro, pipe cleaners, styrofoam and thread came out to about $38.

There weren't any specific measurements for everything on the site so I measured Alexis and went off of that. I started with the fabric I measured out and pinned it into a rectangle with the batting and sewed around the edges. Then sewed 3 lines across the fabric to make the shape of the outfit. I cut arm circles into the fabric, I think I may have made them a little to big but I was winging it, it ended up working out fine. I also added the teeth to the body. Finally I added the velcro to keep the costume together.

After the body I made a shirt and pants. I just took one of Alexis' shirts and her pants an cut out a pattern. I ended up not using the paints, the body was long enough so that I didn't need them.

After being done with all that, which I did feel was the easiest part It took me a couple of days to get started on what I would call the "hood". I didn't want to make it too big or too small. I didn't want it to cover her face, I wanted it to just rest right above her forehead. So I measured her head across and went a couple of inches out. I cut the fabric in a crescent shape and stuffed it with some batting and sewed around the edges and sewed the teeth on. I wanted to stay as true to Boo so I made sure she had the right amount of teeth on there.

I took the styrofoam balls and using a sharpie colored in half of the "eye" and colored in circles for the pupils. I took 2 pipe cleaners,for each eye, and twisted them together and stuck it in the back of the "eye". I then took my dollar tree mop and used the mop hair for the hood. I sewed it on by hand, I wanted to put enough of it on the hood but not too much. After I finished the "hair" I sewed the pipe cleaners onto the hood, which was not easy, you can't really sew through the pipe cleaners, so what I did was sew the "hair" really tight around them and it worked :)

Finally I used elastic to sew the hood onto the body and it was done!

I had to use some safety pins; I had sewn the elastic a little too high so I used a couple of safety pins in the back to hold it down better. Here is Alexis at my work Trunk or Treat on the 30th. She was a hit!