Homemade Ghost Costume: Not Just a Sheet

Mr. No is still undecided about this year's costume.  I hope he doesn't wait until last minutes to chose something that I'm going to have to have to throw together!  Last year he had his heart set on being a ghost.  Seems easy enough.  Every told me just to cut holes in a sheet and be done with it.  Well, that's not fancy enough for me and Mr. No had rules about how he wanted his costume to be.  Rule 1 was nothing could cover his face.  No full masks and absolutely no sheets.  Rule 2 was it had to be just a little scary.  Rule 3 was it had to look cool.  Rule 4 was no face paint. So that pretty much ruled out every costume out there.  All the non-sheet ghost costumes were too girly and the store costumes had full masks or face paint.  Until I found this ghost costume at parenting.com.  I used the oversized sweatshirt idea to use for an easy base but changed the rest of it.  I'm not great at sewing so I really just improvised enough to get it to look decent. 

Instead of using a turtle neck and making a hat, I used a simple white hoodie. I bought it one size too big so we could layer under it.  In New England, you never know what the weather will be.  One year it was t-shirt weather the next we had a blizzard.  I also bought the very durable and still used mask on etsy at Mahalo.  

I did use the tulle that they used but also added 1-2 inch wide strips of another fabric...can't remember the name but it looks like mummy bandages.  Instead of draping it over, I slit the shoulder seams and sewed both the tulle and strips inside.  Then also sewed them along the neck seam so nothing would move and a few around the arm holes.  

 The strips were very delicate and I needed a way to both make them stronger and add a little extra to the costume.  So I watered down some glow in the dark fabric paint and coated the strips.  It stiffened them so they wouldn't break as easily and added a cool little glow effect to his costume. We bought some black sweatpants to make it look like he was floating and then added a thick chain and a ghostly staff to create Mr. No's scary but not too scary ghost.  I should have made something to cover his shoes since they slightly ruined the effect.

 I'm sure those who are even intermediates at sewing could make this look a lot better but Mr. No absolutely loved it, it was comfortable and it was easy to adjust it to whatever weather we might have without ruining the costume.

Linking up with:

Handmade Halloween Costume Contest