Alright, so I know Halloween is over and people are already moving on to *gasp* Christmas!?  But I’m behind as always and like to drag my feet as much as possible when it comes to all things, but especially the holiday season 😛

So I’m sharing this super last minute costume that I made for Kaya for Halloween!  The Nightmare Moon costume I made Yuki took up pretty much aaaall my time the last couple of weeks, but somewhere in between I got it in my head that I wanted to make another costume for Kaya too.  She already had a (slightly too short) Totoro costume, but I really only made that for the tutorial and I considered it a back up costume.  I know, I’m crazy like that.

If you’ve seen The Lego Movie, you may recognize this character.  It’s Princess Unikitty!  YAAAAAY!!  Unikitty is part unicorn, part kitty and she’s ridiculously sweet, friendly and positive, but that’s just the surface.  If you don’t mind a bit of a spoiler, check out her scenes in this video:

I think her character is hilarious.  She’s oozing with cuteness and happiness and optimism, but as we know, it can’t be all rainbows and butterflies all the time.  So after constantly burying any feelings of sadness, hurt or anger deep inside, Unikitty finally explodes in an angry rage, aka Angry Kitty.

While it’s fun to laugh at it in the movie, I think that this character really touches on a pretty serious and prevalent issue that many young people, especially our girls, face today.  Girls are expected to be happy and sweet and they feel pressure to be perfect, which encourages girls to put on a happy face and hide many negative emotions.  Obviously, this takes a huge toll on their mental, physical and emotional health and studies have shown that many school age girls describe themselves as being unhappy and stressed.  Sorry to get all serious in a post about a HALLOWEEN COSTUME, but I just thought it was worth mentioning.  Unikitty is cute and funny, but her character is also an easy way to chat with your kids about what happens when you don’t validate all your emotions.  😛

ANYWAYS.  On to the costume.

This was for my 1 year old, so comfort was key – no cardboard box head for her.  I figured a nice knit tee and leggings would be perfect.  I was making this costume in a few hours the night before Halloween and a few hours the morning of Halloween and I actually didn’t even get to finish it before it was time to go!  So the picture above is the almost finished costume, but no tail and no cuffs on the pants (I don’t think anyone noticed).  It was the fastest I’ve ever sewn and definitely is NOT my finest sewing job, but I had to let go of some of my perfectionism.  It was probably really good for me.

But I still had to finish the costume the next day and take the rest of these photos 😛

For the shirt I used the Oliver + S Field Trip Raglan T-shirt pattern, my tutorial to add ears in the seams, a bit of color blocking and cuffs instead of hemming.  The leggings are the Oliver + S Playtime Leggings pattern (also with color blocking and cuffs).  Man, I LOVE how fast both of these garments come together!  It could have something to do with the fact that I’ve made each of them several times now, but they are such staples in my collection, I highly recommend both.  I debated for awhile whether I should add the ears to the headband with the horn, or attach them to the shirt and finally just ended up attaching them to the shirt because I thought it’d look cuter when the shirt was worn alone.

The pink and white knit fabrics are from Joann but since they didn’t have the right yellow, blue or green colors for the cuffs/neckband, those pieces are all DYED (this part, I had done a few days earlier).  I know, I’m ridiculous.

I also contemplated several different ways of recreating the face.  Stenciling/painting it onto other fabric and then sewing that onto the shirt?  Iron on transfer?  Well I was super short on time so I thought of the fastest and easiest method I could think of.  I downloaded an image of her face from the web and then printed it onto some printable fabric (affiliate link) that I had leftover from the fabric photo books I used to make.  This also ended up being the best looking method since there is no way I could have painted a face that looked that good.  It had an iron on backing, so after cutting out the pieces I ironed it on and then topstitched super close to the edge.  Not sure how well this will hold up but after one washing, the colors already faded a little bit and bled (you can see some pink on the eye on the right)!  Booooo!  I mean, no negativity of any kind!  I must. stay. positive!  Cotton candy?  😛

The horn and tail are made of craft foam.  This isn’t the first time I’ve used craft foam, but I feel like I’m just discovering it’s awesomeness.  It’s really inexpensive, easy to cut, easy to glue (with a hot glue gun) and can be made into an infinite number of things.  I used it for Nightmare Moon’s wings and then for all the Unikitty accessories too.  I wonder what else I can use it for!!

The tail is four layers – two white on the inside and then two blue on the outside, all hot glue gunned together – then temporarily attached to the pants with safety pins.  Easy peasy.

I originally thought I’d attach little stars shooting out of the headband because Unikitty is literally exploding with positivity depicted by stars when she talks.  But then I decided to make them into little props for Kaya to hold in her hands BECAUSE I was hoping it would distract her enough to not rip that headband off.  Yes, that’s right, Kaya could not stand that headband on her head and threw it off every chance she got (no real surprise there).  So giving her these little star sticks (craft foam with a bamboo skewer sandwiched into between) bought me just enough time to snap these pics.

And when Yuki, who usually does not like photo shoots, saw me taking pictures of Kaya, she of course couldn’t miss out on the action.  So she ran to get part of her costume and totally photobombed our shoot.  But I love these pics of them together.  I didn’t get any of them together on Halloween, so this is the next best thing.  And it made me realize that both Halloween costumes were completely Oliver + S!  Between Kaya’s shirt and pants and the helmet, shirt and pants I made for Yuki (not to mention the raglan tee she’s wearing in the pictures above), it’s all Oliver + S patterns!  I’m telling ya, these are my go to patterns.  And I’m not even getting paid to say this!  They are just great and they never fail me.

Well there you have it.  Another Halloween in the books.  And now it’s time to start brainstorming for next year!  Haha, just kidding.  Though Yuki has started listing off all of the things she wants to be for Halloween next year.  Oh dear, what have I created!?