I was invited to a Wes Anderson themed birthday party and nothing appealed to me more than Moonrise Kingdom

Sam and Suzie are so cute and I thought dressing up like them would be great fun

This is how I made the costumes

Step 1: Items I Bought

- A dress
- Khaki shirt

- Khaki pants

- Yellow tshirt to make the scarf out of

- Pillow case to make the collar from

- Legwarmers to make the hat out of

- White socks for me

- Yellow socks for him

Step 2: The Dress

I didn't feel like sewing a dress from scratch so I found a whole bunch of items from a second hand store that I put together to make this cute cosplay of Sam and Suzie from Moonrise Kingdom.
I started off with a huge pink dress that was way too big and in hindsight, it may have looked a little better had I sewn it all but we had limited time to get ready for the party so I needed the quick options

Step 3: Altering the Dress

The dress needed a lot of work.

I started with turning it inside out and removing the tulle that was sewn into the sleeves

#The80s!

Step 4: Cutting the Dress

Suzie's dress is actually pretty short and this thing came to below my ankles

So I put it on, measured where my knee was, laid it out flat, marked and cut off a whole bunch of fabric

Step 5: Cutting the Sleeves

The sleeves were also pretty long, so I chopped of some of that too

Step 6: Hemming the Dress

I don't even know what this fabric was, but it was terrible.

It didn't want to be sewn and as soon as a needle passed through it, it began to pucker

I didn't have much of a choice but to put a hem in the places I had cut, it didn't look that bad once complete, plus I would be wearing it at night so it wouldn't be that obvious

Step 7: Taking the Dress in

Now I mentioned the dress was huge on me, so I took a little seem down the side just by the bust but it still didn't sit right because of all the gathers along the empire waistline. So I unpicked just the front part, straightened it out and did a resew with less ruffles.

There was excess fabric on the sides that I had to cut off as well and then I needed to sew the side back together.

It wasn't perfect like I said, but it didn't look too horrible

My advice would be to find a dress that fits a little better than what this one did

Step 8: Sew the Collar Part 1

Suzie's dress has a collar, so I cute up the pillow case that I bought for this purpose.

I first folded and pinned the dress so that I could get the shape for the collar.

I only did one on the front due to time constraints.

After pinning the dress, I traced the shape on the pillow case and cut that out

Step 9: Sew the Collar Part 2

I had to cut four pieces for the collar because each needed to be double sided and hemmed

I lined them up and sewed them inside out essentially, leaving a gap for where I would need to turn it right side out and then did a quick stitch on that little hole

Then I pinned in onto the dress, sewed it on and tacked the back part

And that was the dress done.

I also bought long white socks and had a pink ribbon lying around to tie around my waist.

Suzie also carried flowers, so I cut up some pieces of scrap wood and cut out semi-circles in the pillow fabric and rolled them around the sticks and glued them to resemble flowers

Step 10: Sam's Hat

I bought two pairs of leggings.

One pair would make the hat part.

I cut them both in half and measured my boyfriend's head

I sewed the pieces in a circle which was open at the top and bottom

I then took left over fur for the top. Just cut a circle and sew it on.

What is ideal about the fur is that you can't see any stitching, so I did it all by hand and floofed the fluff over the sewing

For the tail, I had a second pair of leggings that had a sort of stripey pattern on it

I just needed just a tube for the tail.

I cut a length and cut the tip in a point and started sewing

I added a little stuffing just to make it stand a little fuller

Step 11: Sewing Patches

Sam has a number of patches on his shirt, I copied two, very badly.

I took felt in the correct colours and mimicked the patterns. It was amusing and cute.

I did see someone else print a badge of paper and cut that out which was a smarter idea if your sewing skills are as bad as mine

Step 12: Badges

I had a few lying around the house

I thought that I would be able to get away with sewing buttons on but I sort of forgot that my boyfriend hates the feeling of buttons. So I had to remove those.

I went to another charity store and dug through their jewelry and was lucky enough to turn up and entire box of badges which were perfect