Halloween Outfits Made Around A Simple Black Dress.

I really don’t like to throw away costumes that can only be worn for one day. When your children are young, they grow so fast that a Halloween costume bought for one year rarely fits the next. This is so unecologically sound! In light of this, one of the first Halloween outfits I made for my little one was a Durable Witches Outfit. I used a plain black dress as the base for a witch costume, and so thus can reuse the black dress on other occasions. But this post continues this theme, showing other quick last minute Halloween outfits made around a simple black dress.

Halloween Outfits Made Around A Simple Black Dress

Do you need a quick last minute Halloween costume? Then all these outfits can be easily and cheaply made around a black dress.

I made a simple black dress from a modified simplicity pattern. This dress can be worn again and again, so it doesn’t have to just be made for one day!

If you look closely you can see it has buttons attached to the shoulders. These are easily removed, but they also serve as the perfect way to attach accessories to make this dress the base for lots of other costumes.

Bat Costume

You will need

• A roll of Black felt
• Several small pieces of white felt
• Scissors
• Black and white thread to sew pieces to dress
• A white dressmakers pencil

Firstly, I measured my daughter’s arm span with her hands stretched out to the side as wide as she could reach. Then I measured the length from her shoulders to her bottom, as this would be the length of the wings/cape.

On the large roll of black felt I drew a line with the dressmakers pencil that was as long as her arm-span. I marked the centre of this line and put marks about an inch above the line and marked below it to the length I’d measured earlier. Then I drew a batwing shape between these marks using a curved ruler, but you could do it freehand.

I cut out this shape.

Then added button holes to correspond with the buttons on the shoulders of the dress

Finally I cut out 2 circles of white felt, 2  slightly smaller circles of black felt, and 2 white triangle and tacked these to the front of the dress. This way they are easily removed in order to use the plain black dress again. 

And you have a finished bat outfit!

Batgirl outfit

The wings for the bat outfit will also double as a cape for a batgirl outfit.

• I sewed a thin belt of yellow satin fabric
• added a Batman embroidered motif (which you can find on  – 8cm wide) – again I sewed this on loosely so it can easily be removed.
• And made a batman mask by glueing some of the black felt to a piece of card and using a piece of thin elastic.

Why not make a felt hero mask?

And you have a finished batgirl outfit. My little girl loves being a superhero, she has already got a Wonder Woman costume!

Vampire outfit

Similarly, you can accessorise the dress with a belt made from red satin fabric, and by tacking more of the red fabric to the independent of the witches cape from last week. By adding a white t-shirt, tights and a handkerchief at the neckline, you have a great homemade vampire outfit. 

Just add some white face paint and fake blood and the job is done!

Cat outfit

Finally, and most simply of all, just wear the black dress with a cat mask or cat headband and add whiskers drawn on with a eyebrow pencil to make a cat outfit.

There are lots of possible Halloween outfits made around a simple black dress to be made. These are all very quick and easy to do. And at least this means that the black dress may get lots of wears over the coming few months before my little girl grows out of it.

And why not pin this post for later?