Halloween 2011

I have a son and was very excited I might say, when he asked for an Evil Emperor Zurg costume this year. Okay, my initial reaction was "really?!?" It was late August when he decided on this, and come mid September, he hadn't changed his mind.  Sooo, I started to look around for one.  I decided I wasn't going to spend $50+ for a used Zurg costume, and I would make my own :)  I love a challenge, a sewing/creativity challenge that is!

I set off to find pictures of Zurg on the internet to get the creative juices flowing...
http://pixar.wikia.com/Emperor_Zurg

Then I went and bought my fabric, I visually sized up my son and decided 2 yards ought to do the job.
(on sale for $2.99 a yard too!) I ended up with some left overs, but I had to be conservative- working without a pattern and all. I needed a cape, and I found a pretty inexpensive one on ebay (had to be red on the inside, black on the outside)


I then took actual measurements of my 4 year old- waist, height (from: shoulder to floor, waist to floor, shoulder to waist) and head circumference

I started with the "skirt/bottom."  I needed it to stay in shape at the bottom and kind of stand out so I used  boning for that purpose.  Then I needed it to have the wave pattern at the bottom so I bought the rope stuff (excuse my lack of proper naming here) you use to put edges on throw pillows.  I had made sure that the skirt was long enough (I added like 10 inches to his height) to accomodate this wave pattern, so I started from the bottom of the skirt up.  Does that make sense?  I didn't put in the elastic for the waist until it was finished.




The shirt- I took one of his night shirts (the fitted kind) and worked with that as my pattern.


The extras for the costume:
The cumber-bunt was made of black lycra and also had that rope in it.  I added elastic to the top and middle portions between the rope to help the piece keep it's shape. (boning may have been okay too). I put velcro on the ends of it for easy wearing.

Zurg "logo" button- I used a large bottle top and covered it with gray fabric.  I made the "Z" and red circle out of construction paper and glued them on to the bottle cap.  I then hand stitched the cap to the shirt of the costume.

The gauntlets- made of gray felt I hand stitched these, because I couldn't sew it on my machine the way I wanted.  I left a piece at the bottom (where the wrist fits) so that he could fit his hand through the opening without having to tie it on - easy wearing.

Now the head-  I had found two choices: either make it a hoodie where son's face is the only face, or make a "hat head". I went with the latter of the two and got the creative juices going again.  It took me just as long to make the hat as it did to make the rest of the costume. Crazy?!?

I decided to go with a craft foam sheet. My other ideas were thick interfacing, thin cardboard, ? I bought an 12x18inch sheet in light gray.  I cut in half, so that I had two 6x18 inch pieces.  I had to add an extra piece to the back so that the band would go all the way around his head.  I used staples to hold that together, and duck tape to add the top portion of the head.  Really high tech stuff ;0)  I then draped fabric over the head; starting at the bottom of the hat, I stapled the fabric on to it. The eyes are two bottle caps I painted red, and the mouth is a laminated construction paper.

The horns- Well...., the previous year I made my husband a "Sully" hat (from Monster's Inc.) and had crocheted some horns for that costume.  I remembered I had them, and reused them for Emperor Zurg.  I started bottom up on those too, (kind of like you would a mitten).  I attached those with a needle and thread, making sure I got the fabric and the horns all the way around. The end result-

 What do you think?  Does he look like Zurg?
-Nicte