Toy Story Round up Gang

I guess I was overdue for spending a lot of time and money on some really good costumes, because I decided to take on a very ambitious project that we were able to use for Halloween and Ashlyn's 6th birthday party.

Ashlyn's Jessie costume is a white shirt I got at a thrift store ($2.50) doctored with yellow cotton fabric, red thread, and buttons ($1 each! OUCH!), and hand-me-down jeans with flannel cow fabric sewn on top. Believe it or not, I made the whole thing in one evening. The hat was a memento she had gotten from the Toy Story 2 on Ice show, and the hair is her own sprayed orange (neon, not that it looked it!) and put in a braid.

The hardest thing to find was the boots, and I was amazed to go into a thrift store on a 50% off day and find TWO sets of black boots--one in size 13 (Ashlyn's size) and one in size 7 (Kian's size). $5 for two sets of MATCHING boots. Obviously it was meant to be.

Doug's costume was a woman's yellow silk shirt that I painstakingly sewed red stripes on (this took longer than the remainder of his costume and all of Ashlyn's combined!). I sewed on larger versions of the same buttons I used for Ashlyn's shirt, and used more cow-print flannel for the vest (there was no trim in the right pattern, so I used white double-fold bias tape and drew my own stripes on with a Sharpie).

Since I couldn't find boots cheap enough, I used leather-looking home decorator fabric (used for tablecloths) to sew faux-boot tops, using gold thread to embellish and attaching the 'spurs' with brass-colored brads! I also used more fabric to make a holster, but of course Woody has no gun so we left it empty.

The hardest part was finding a hat--I looked at dozens of garage sales and thrift stores and couldn't find any brown hats. In the 11th hour (2 days before Halloween) I found the nearly perfect hat at a Halloween costume shop--though it looked exactly like Woody's hat and it matched Ashlyn's in material, it was only 'nearly' perfect because it was meant for a kid, not an adult! But amazingly, it still managed to stay on his head! With a $1 red bandana from Wishing Well, his own jeans and the belt from his Han Solo costume, Woody was complete.

Now, the hardest part was of course making a Bullseye costume. There are no horse patterns, so I got the pattern for a jumpsuit "bunny" costume and altered it. I reshaped the hood and put my hair in a ponytail (pun not intended) on top of my head to make a better 'horse' shaped face. The eyes and eyebrows are leftover felt. The entire costume is in ultrasuede (on sale, still cost over $30), with the exception of the saddle which I had to sew freehand from the same leather-looking home decorator fabric I used for Woody's boots. The stirrups are just painted cardboard. The boots are those same ones I used for "Delenn" (I matched the darker brown ultrasuede to these boots on purpose!)

For Ashlyn's birthday party, we dressed Kian up as a "Little Woody". This perfect yellow plaid shirt was from a thrift store, the jeans used to be Ashlyn's, the vest also made from leftover flannel, and the boots were like I told you above.

Oct 31, 2003