rubber duckie, you're the one

you make bathtime lots of fun!  yup, i decided to be a rubber duckie for halloween this year.  here is my sketch for the design.  i used the jacket pattern from mom's and dad's fleece jackets for the body, drafted a hood pattern from an icebreaker hoodie that jimmy got me for a birthday, and used the pj pants pattern from my kenya pants for the bottoms.  the yellow fabric was another fleece blanket. (at one point i had 5 of these fleece blankets in my apartment!)

first up, the hood:

i might have worn the hood the whole time that i was sewing the rest of the costume...

for those that think i am a master sewer, fear not!  i make a ton of mistakes.  here i sewed the left half of the costume correctly and the right side was sewn inside out.  oops!

i sewed flaps between the bottom of the sleeve seams and the bodice side seams for wings:

the whole costume was utterly ridiculous, but so much fun to sew up!

without the tail or beak yet.  i resembled a yellow speedskater at this point, hehe.

the beak is my favorite part.  i made it from orange canvas that i got at jem fabric warehouse in manhattan.  unfortunately it closed, but it had a ton of awesome fabric for decently cheap.  i was worried that the stiffness of the woven canvas would not work well with the stretchiness of the fleece.  it ended up not being a problem at all.  (i'm wearing a me-made dress while trying on the duck beak!)

my coworker brian captured the best picture of the costume.  the duck tail was attached to my lower back and was stuffed with polyfill and fleece scraps.  the eyes were made of scraps from dad's navy fleece outfit.  my algebra 2 students and i had a long planning session about whether the eyes should be just blue or whether i should include whites above it: they determined that whites were a necessity.  i bought orange tights at ricky's to finish out the costume.  the tights cost $7.99!!!  more than the cost of the rest of the costume!  the blue zipper was a random one i found in my stash.  i believe it was from an old pillowcase.  my coworker erika is to the right.  she was a cootie queen, a costume she made herself as well!

hope everyone had a fun halloween!