Easy Girly Pirate Costume

I know we're too far past Halloween for anyone to be interested in costumes...but I was pretty happy with how our costumes came together since a few days before Halloween, I had no idea how I was going to bring them about.  (And costumes can be a fun Christmas or birthday present.)

We'd suggested to Firecracker that she should be a pirate because of the eye patch she gets to wear in the afternoons and she already had a pirate dress I made for her last spring (and still need to post about).  She agreed...but then didn't want to wear the eye patch or the dress...because the dress wasn't a "costume," and she just doesn't want to wear the eye patch more than she has to.

So after browsing some pirate costume pictures, we came up with a few essential elements to make a pirate costume

• red, white, and black/navy blue
• a mixture of solids and stripes
• a white shirt with a vest
• fringed/worn looking clothes. 

We already had everything I needed from around the house or from my stash.  If you count the original price of the things that I did buy a while ago including the thrifted T-shirts, though, her costume probably cost around $5-7.

We already had the pirate hat on hand, but it came from the dollar store.

The white blousy white shirt was given to us in a bag of hand-me-downs a month or so ago...perfect timing.

The belt I picked up a month or two ago from Goodwill thinking I might expand the accessories in my wardrobe.  I have yet to wear it, but it worked great for Firecracker's costume.

The red vest was made from an old T-shirt in my stash.  I made the shape of the vest match the neckline of the shirt as close as I could.  I used a black T-shirt in the stash to make the "bias" tape for the edges.  (I didn't really cut it on a bias, though, because T-shirt fabric naturally has some give to it already.)  The cute button available here, at From the Red Kitchen.  I was too lazy to make a button loop, so there is actually a snap sewn on behind the button.

To make the skirt, I used the rest of the red shirt that I used to make the vest, as well as a thrifted striped tank top.  I cut them so they were even at the top, folded it down about an inch, pinned, and sewed to make a casing for the elastic.  I didn't fringe the striped part because I wanted it to work as a modest costume, even without pants underneath.  I like the look of the red part of the skirt fringed though, and for that, I just cut random parts out until it looked the way I wanted.

The gray pants were a lucky find as I was going through my scraps box.  They were given to us as hand-me-downs, but had big holes in the knee...so I didn't feel bad at all about "ruining" them by cutting the fringe.

The striped leggings underneath are actually the sleeves left over from a previous T-shirt butchering project.  She ended up not wearing them because they kept slipping down.  I should have added elastic to the top...but was too busy finishing the other costumes that day and it wasn't worth it to do after the fact.

The shoes were another fortunate hand-me-down that matched the color scheme perfectly.

The loot bag is just a simple drawstring bag made from an old T-shirt dress.  The string for it came from the same black T-shirt that I cut up to make the bias tape for the vest.

In the end, it was a fun and easy and cheap costume to put together...and made for one happy pirate.

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Modern Art Heart Original Painting from nJoyArt	Girl with the Savior Print from Shirleen Bland's Art Studio	Binary Love Pendant from Boutique Academia