Halloween is just around the corner and with so many costumes to make this year I decided two things: 1) They need to be fairly simple, and 2) I need to start earlier than I have in the past.  The two older girls each have a definite ideas of what they want to be.  But what should we do for the baby since she will be barely three months old? At two her sister goes around singing all the time and the idea for the baby's costume came about one day while she was singing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider".  We had a three pack of onesies that I bought in error when making the Designer Baby Ts so we wanted to use those if possible.  Here is the baby's costume for her first Halloween along with the design.  And then, way down below is another we made for a little baby boy.

Here is what you need:

Onesie  in the size for your baby*

Medium width black rick rack - about 5" for a 0-3 months size

Small square of black fabric - about 3"x3"

Spider embroidery design (Click here for mine)

soft cut-away stabilizer

embroidery thread

Printed template of design for placement

Here is what you do:

1.   Sew the rick rack onto the onesie so that the raw edge at the top is inside.

2.   Pin the printed template so that the design will cover the other raw edge of the rick rack.

3.   Hoop two layers of soft cut-away stabilizer.  Spray around the edges with a little temporary spray adhesive if you like.  Slide the onesie over the whole hoop and adjust until the template is centered.  Now pin all around the edges.

*Now comes the part that I found challenging.  So if you  read this and decide it will be too much trouble you can do one of two things:  1.  Buy those side snap t-shirts and follow the instructions in the Designer Baby T blog, or 2.  Do what I did in the Ghost instructions that follow below.  Anyway...

4.  Carefully pull the back side off the hoop.  Then roll and pin to keep it from sliding under the hoop when you are embroidering.  But be sure that your rolls and pins are going to be out of the way of the embroidery foot too. 

5.  Embroider the design until you finish the placement run for the embroidery.  Place the black fabric square on top making sure it completely covers the placement stitches.  Embroider the tack down run.

Carefully remove the hoop and lay on a flat surface.  Trim closely around the outside of the tack down stitches. (If you need to see more on trimming applique go here.)

6.  Carefully put the hoop back on the machine and finish embroidering the design.  Remove the hoop, take out all those pins and trim the stabilizer. 

Add ruffles on the back.  Here is what I did :

1.  Measure the widest part of the backside of the onsie.

2.  Cut two strips of fabric 21" X 2 1/2" and one strip 18" X 2 1/2".

3.  With right sides together sew down the long side of each strip using a 1/4" seam. 

4.  Turn right side out and press so that the seam is in the center like this:

5.  Fold the ends into the tube 1/4" and sew the ends shut.

6.  Using a long straight stitch sew along the long edge leaving thread tails at both ends.  Do this again slightly below the first line of stitches.  Now slowly pull on a thread and work the ruffles down until you read the desired size (mine was 8").  Sew the ruffle on and trim the thread tails.

7.  Repeat for the other two strips.  Sew one just underneath the first ruffle and then the shortest one just below the second ruffle.

For the headband (Which was not yet completed when we took the above picture I just embroidered the same spider on felt, cut it out and will glue it onto a stretchy headband like this:

When I began this costume I thought it would be so simple but hooping that onesie was a little more complex than I had anticipated.  After all the Designer Ts were easy.  But I still wanted to use these since I had them so I did something a little different  for Aaron's ghost costume.  We embroidered on the backside and created an iron-on patch for the front to avoid the hooping challenge.  Here it is:

What you need:

A onsie

Square of black fabric approximately 4"x 4"

Square of white fabric approximately 3" x 3 1/2"

Medium  Tear away (if it is not heavy enough it may not hold up for this technique.)

Ghost Design (Click here to download this one)

Printed templates of the designs for placement

Heat N Bond or Trans Web appliqué iron-on

What you do:

1.  Pin the Boo design in place on the backside.  Hoop the stabilizer, center the onesie and template.  You can use a little temporary spray adhesive if you like.  Pin around so it stays.  Embroider BOO.  You can make any words you like using Alpha Xpress in the right size for the project.

2.  Hoop the stabilizer.  Spray the corners of the black fabric square with temporary adhesive and place on top of the stabilizer in the hoop.  Embroider the placement and the tack down runs.  Remove the hoop and place on a flat surface.  Trim the fabric only closely around the outside of the stitches .

3.  Put the hoop back on the machine and embroider the appliqué run. 

4.  Embroider the placement run for the ghost.  You should have this so far:

5.  Slide the white fabric over the placement stitches making sure all is covered.  Embroider the tack down  run.

6.  Remove the hoop and place on a flat surface.  Trim the white fabric only closely around the outside of the ghost stitches. 

7.  Slide the hoop back onto the machine and embroider the appliqué run of the ghost.  Embroider the rest of the colors to complete the ghost. 

8.  Remove from the hoop and carefully remove the stabilizer.  You now have a patch.

7.  Cut a rectangle of Heat N Bond the same size as the embroidered patch.  Iron onto the backside of the patch.  Remove the paper backing, determine exact placement on the front of the onesie and iron on.

This was much easier.  Now I just need to decide what to do with one more leftover onesie and these will have been put to use.

If you don't want a ghost you can put lots of embroidery designs inside a applique frame and create your own patch. 

Take care,

DB

 PS:  Hopefully they won't outgrow these before they get to wear them!