Introduction: Quick Pirate Costume Using Instructables!

About: I love all aspects of cooking...okay that's not true, I'm not a fan of baking. I love the free form of cooking savory foods versus baking but with time, I hope to learn more techniques as I peruse the differen…

So originally my kid was going to be Dora the Explorer for Halloween because she took it upon herself to chop off her hair.  When I "fixed" it, she looked like she had a Dora-style bob.  I figured this year a costume would be easy because she already had a purple shirt, orange shorts, yellow socks and white shoes....and her trusty Dora backpack.  When I put it together, it didn't even look like she had a costume on.  Sigh.

Lately she has been into pirates so I thought, "How could I make a pirate costume on the cheap?"  

I looked through a bag of clothes I was going to donate to goodwill and found:

- my old black and white striped shirt 
- a red shirt my daughter had grown out of
- a pair of black pants

I went out and bought:
- 3 rolls of tulle (red, black and white)
- 1 small strip of elastic

On hand:
- sewing machine
- ribbon
- old red bandana

I remember seeing an instructable by domesticengineer which shows you how to make a large t-shirt into a kid sized dress.  I used this method to "shrink down" my black and white striped shirt.  I wanted a little vest for her so all I did there was cut the old red shirt of hers down the middle. Boom - instant vest.  

My sister suggested that a little corset would look cute so I cut one of the pant legs off, used half the panels (cut along the seam) and sewed the cut edge.  I then measured it around my daughter's waist, cut off a lot of excess and cut slits into the edges for the corset.  Sorry, the how to is not pictured. :(

For the tutu, there is an instructable by ybedull which shows you how to make a no sew tutu and it was so easy, it's ridiculous!  I went to Hobby Lobby because there is always a sale going on and you can always find a 40% off coupon online. So I bought 3 rolls of tulle at 2.99 each but there was a 40% off sale on that plus my online coupon so it was a steal.  I also bought some elastic at 1.29.  About 6 bucks altogether.  In ybedull's i'ble she has some really great tools to make the tutu easier to make but I didn't have all those things and since I'm a cheapskate all I did was measure out 22" on my table, marked the length with some masking tape and measured and cut 60 pieces of tulle, 20 of each color.  I also didn't wrap ribbon around the waistband because I was starting to feel lazy.  

I think it came out pretty cute and no she didn't want to take it off.  

Happy Halloween!

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