Zack Attack: Easy DIY Superhero Costume

Let me tell you a little story.

I am the mother of three children - my oldest son, Will, is 8; Jillian is 6 and the youngest is Zack, 2. Through the years, my older two have collected a few Halloween costumes and we keep them around as dress-up clothes. Zack, on the other hand, has only had three Halloweens total; for the first two he only wore Halloween pajamas and this past year he was Plex the Robot:

Jillian has the most dress-up clothing of all because, well, she's a girl. She likes that sort of thing. Zack also enjoys playing dress-up, but he only has the one outfit to wear that's actually his. The rest of the time, he has to borrow from his big sister, like so:

I asked my oldest son if I could cut down the arms and legs of some of his old costumes for Zack, but Will wasn't super on board with that idea, so my husband suggested I make good use of my sewing talents.

Fast forward about a month, and I started thinking of what to make. I told Zack I could give him a superhero costume, figuring a cape and a felt mask would be pretty easy to sew. If that went well I figured I could move on to a cape for a prince with a felt crown and maybe some animal or monster hats and sweatsuits.

Initially, Zack was pretty excited about the idea of being a superhero. He even told me he wanted to be a BLUE superhero (so much for the old red sheet I was planning to use for the cape, HA!), and he went around the house telling his older siblings, "Mommy's going to make me a superhero costume!"

What crafty mama could resist such enthusiasm, right?

So, today I got to work. I dug out an old blue pillowcase from the linen closet and I grabbed my collection of felt and made up a costume. I also used the mask template from the Living Locurto blog. Easy peasy! In under an hour I had this:

Voila! One DIY pillowcase superhero costume. Perfect, right?

Nope.

You see, remember when I told you that Zack is two years old? Yeah, about that. He's not just two years old; he's TWO YEARS OLD. As in, he's a two-year-old. The terrible twos? Yeah, we've got that. He's fickle and argumentative and sometimes very sweet. But today, not so much on the sweet part.

Today, he doesn't LIKE his superhero costume, mommy!

Oy, vey.

Here's hoping that my older two kids will come home from school and fuss over how cool it is so he'll start liking it. Maybe then I'll be able to get a shot of him actually wearing the darn thing. But I'm not holding my breath.

I always believe that if you can learn from something then it was a worthwhile experience, at least in part.

Let's see, what did I learn from THIS project?

- It's not super hard to make costumes for your kids. I should do it more often; maybe they'd play more and zone out less.
- If I make the mask again I should cut the template twice and sew them together; after Zack pulled on it a lot the eye holes are kind of stretched out and wonky.
- Next time I get it into my head that Zack needs a cape, I'm going to give him a PLAIN pillowcase first. If he wears that he can get his own special superhero logo later on.

Thanks for letting me share my crafty story with you today! I hope your DIY adventures have happier endings.

Up, up, and away!!!!