Simplicity Pattern 2788 - A Purple Cat Costume

Lawd knows how much I love a good Halloween. And a good Halloween we HAD.

This year Everett's costume was store-bought, since I had no desire to tackle the whole cosplay thing. Alice wanted to be a purple cat, so we went to Joann and let her pick out her favorite fleece fabric. Her arms and legs were kept warm by purple leggings and a long sleeved shirt from Primary.com.

Her costume pattern was Simplicity 2788, and I substituted a cat ear headband for the hat options. The cat face was freehand work. I cut felt pieces out of fabric left over from costumes of years past, then did a whip stitch to secure them in place. I prefer this hand sewing method over gluing or fusing, since I find those other methods tend to peel at the corners.

I wrapped the headband (one with cat ears I found at Joann) with random purple polka dot fabric I had in the basement (also used for the cat's pupils). To do this:

• Cut fabric in 1/2" strips using pinking sheers (to avoid frayed fabric). Ribbon could also work.
• Use a hot glue gun on about 1-2 inches of the headband.
• Carefully wrap the fabric around the headband and over the glue.
• When the glue cools a bit, press the fabric down.
• Add another 1-2 inches of glue (depending on how fast you work), and keep wrapping until you reach the end.
• To finish, put some glue on the end of the fabric covering the headband.
• Tuck end of fabric strip and place over the glue. Hold until firmly in place. 
• I also added some little pieces of pink fabric to the ears using hot glue because I knew it would make her happy.

And there you have it. My little purple cat! 

Is there anything more fun than trick-or-treating? 

So you don't think this all went over without a hitch, Alice was DEVASTATED to discover I had used green felt for her cat's eyes. She wanted PURPLE. Even though the pupils were purple, she did.not.want that green. I explained to her that cats' eyes are green or yellow. She didn't care. So I reasoned. Iiiif there was time, I would change the green to pink. But, Mommy might not have time to fix it, ok? She was completely fine with this, and we (surprisingly) moved on with life.