No Sew Hobbit Costume

Last year's Doctor Who costumes were so much fun that I really wanted to have themed costumes again this year for Halloween.  I thought that dressing up as characters from The Hobbit would be great - Jesse could be Gandalf, I could be Galadriel, Steven could be Bilbo, and Kenneth could be baby Smaug.  However, good intentions only get you so far, especially when you have two little kids to keep you busy!  Sadly I wasn't able to make costumes for Jesse and myself, but I did manage to dress up the kids!  I found a discounted little dragon costume for Kenneth, and then made a Bilbo costume for Steven.

Here is what I did to make a cheap and easy no-sew hobbit costume!

The nice thing about hobbit costumes is that you can find the clothes you need at thrift stores and then modify them.  For the Bilbo costume I needed a white button-up shirt, a green vest, brown pants, and a red jacket.

I couldn't find a green vest, but I did find a green shirt for fifty cents.  I didn't want to pull out the sewing machine, so to turn the shirt into a vest I cut the sleeves and collar off, cut it open in the front, and then used masking tape to make the "seams".

I sewed on some buttons from my button jar.

And then because I didn't want to make button holes I just used hot glue to attach some velcro to hold the vest closed.

When you attach the velcro together you can't even tell the buttons are just for decoration!  I guess sewing the buttons on means that this isn't completely "no-sew"... but if you really didn't want to sew the buttons on, you could probably hot glue those too.  I don't know how well the hot glue will hold up long-term, but I just wanted it to last for one day, so I didn't care.

I re-used the jacket from Steven's costume last year.  It was too big for him then, and I had to hem it.  It was still too big for him this year, but I didn't have to hem it as much.  Again because I was going for quick and easy, I used masking tape to hem the sleeves, and used safety pins to hem the sides and then covered the safety pins with masking tape to make sure they didn't come undone by accident.

Since we would be trick-or-treating at a local mall, our little hobbit clearly couldn't go barefoot, so I decided to make him furry hobbit feet to attach to his sandals.  I used some yarn that was left over from making this pony.

I cut several strands of similar lengths and then used another piece to tie them all together in the middle.

Then I brought the two sides together to make a pom-pom-like mass of yarn.  I also unraveled some of the yarn so it didn't look as tidy and yarn-like.

Hairy hobbit feet tied to the sandals.

One little hobbit, ready to go on an adventure!  Now all you need is a sleepy little baby Smaug.