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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?
Love this! A brilliant way to re-purpose old clothes for Halloween without having to spend money on new ones! (But if I had a little girl I’d probably dress her as batman anyway!) Really fun post 🙂
My little girl loves Superheroes (her absolute favourite is the Hulk) so I’m sure that she will be asking me for more costumes! Thank you for reading!
These are amazingly cute ideas!!!
Thank you!
This is so clever! I wish I had a child who I could make this for. I will share with some friends who may find this interesting 🙂
Thank you so much!
Love this idea! Our oldest wants to be a vampiress this year so I’ve dug out an old Lipsy dress of mine for her to wear & she loves it! #MMBC
Great idea. Just great to have options with a toddler! Lol
Genius ideas and cost effective. Thanks for sharing X #anythinggoes
Thank you for reading x
This is so cute and awesome! I wish you were around when I was trying to come up with some of my past costumes.
Thank you! I used to love making myself daft fancy dress outfits when I was younger. Thank you for reading!
So clever, those buttons are a great idea for transforming the look easily #GlobalBlogging
Thank you. And they can just be removed.
Genius, i love this, simple yet effective
Thank you. It is always good to have choices to give a toddler!
Thank you!
I would never have thought of trying all these things with just a simple dress. Thanks for linking up with #globalblogging
Thank you for reading. It’s just nice to know that the dress will be used more than once!
This is a great idea and you really can’t go wrong with the black dress! I have a few costumes that I try to repurpose. This year I simply used what I already had to make myself a pirate costume. Then I borrowed my son’s pirate sword, eye patch and vest lol! #GlobalBlogging
It may get easier as she gets older. She may want to wear flouncy dresses more. Your pirate outfit sounds fabulous!