Sewing: PBJ Costume

What do you want to be for Halloween, Ana?
Peanut Butter Jelly!

Maybe you want to be a faerie, you think?
Nope. I think I want to be a Peanut Butter Jelly Sandwich!

How about jelly Bean?
No, Amma! I want to be Peanut Butter Jelly Sandwich!

O-kay! Peanut Butter Jelly Sandwich it is.

And, so, I bought some foam and fabric and made this costume for her. Am glad she didn't ask for anything too complicated... thankfully, this was a terribly simple one to make and I had a lot of fun making it.

D helped cut the foam into roughly standard bread slice shape, and I sewed the covering for the foam slices, going for the rustic bread look, making sure they are not terribly perfect (yeah, right!)

I went with off-white fleece fabric for bread slice even though we usually don't buy white bread, and got some brown feltfor the crust, just to give it some texture and depth. Plain cotton fabric would not have made the bread slices stand out as much as fleece.

Now, the peanut butter color was hard to find, - we love chunky peanut butter so I wanted to find some self-print fabric that sort of mimicked the texture...but, no luck. So I went with a tan brown cotton fabric. Ana wanted purple jelly as purple is her favorite color.

Simply sew on the shoulder straps and connect up the sides with strips of PB and J fabric and voilà!

The bonnet was the masterly touch, imho - I think the bonnet makes her costume come alive and drip with cuteness, don't you agree?!

Everybody in the neighborhood where Ana went trick-or-treating very easily identified her as Peanut Butter Jelly Sandwich, which felt very rewarding for a simple job well-done - not to brag or anything, really :)

As mentioned last year, I have mixed feelings about Halloween: I do not approve of the candy-binge, I do not like the spooky horror stuff, however, I do like the fact that kids can get very creative and design their costume and even perhaps make it themselves, or at least help make it when possible... I know I couldn't make Ana's costume last year and I ended up buying one after severely knotting my innards with moral anguish...

D was very enthusiastic about showing off her costume in the neighborhood and he took her trick-or-treating, promptly stashing away the candy-loot out-of-sight, while I stayed home with Oggie who was running a 101.5°F temperature due to nasty ear infection and so was terribly fussy and unhappy, poor baby!

We had fewer trick-or-treaters this year than last year, and I guess I was right about that invisible 'X' mark... And, to my surprise, instead of the traditional little loot basket or little bag, they all came with huge pillow cases as candy-sack...