The Red Hood Gang
This year, Halloween was extra special for Jo’s neighbors and her children.  The storybook quartet must have charmed the candy handlers at every house they visited.
Jo hunted high and low to get just the right materials. She sewed and smocked and then tweaked what she had on hand to finish up the costumes for Little Red Riding Hood’s cast.
The Woodcutter is convincingly brave with his rugged plaid shirt, suspenders and 5 o’clock shadow. Frankly, in my humble opinion, the pint sized Big Bad Wolf is just too darn cute to be frightening and ferocious.  But he seems to have risen to the occasion by wearing a bad wolf attitude on top of his predator costume.
Little white-haired, bespectacled Grandmother was up from her sick bed looking well and adorable in her smocked flannel nightie.
Subtle details make this grouping magical for me. Little Red Riding Hood’s cape is lined with fabric which tells the story and closed with a Red Riding Hood button. With her basket brimming with nutritious goodies for Grandmother, she is every child’s vision of the kind hearted little girl.
Jo shared these details of their costumes.
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I made Joy’s cape, Noel’s nightgown and cap, Samuel’s suspenders, and Nathan’s mask, cuffs, shoe covers, and tail. Joy’s cape was made with another pattern from that Little Things to Sew book. I ordered a special Red Riding Hood print fabric for the cape lining; you can see it a little in the button picture. And it does have a hood, even though we forgot to put it up for the pictures!
Noel’s nightgown is the Cherry Williams bishop pattern adjusted for a shoulder closure according to Michie Mooney’s recent instructions on her blog. (Always trying something new….)   As you already know, I made the sleeves too long. Tucks drew them up to the correct length.
I ran into other snags along the way. I didn’t really consult the smocking graph before I pleated it, just threw the thing under the pleater and pleated as many rows as *seemed* good!! I think it would have looked better with one more row.
Then, no matter what I did, I could not get the neck to cinch up small enough for Noel’s size. I ended up cutting a longer neck binding piece. I think the neck is the circumference of a size 10!
After mulling this over for a couple days, it occurred to me that the problem was most likely the flannel fabric. But it’s not falling off of her, and it’s pajamas, so it doesn’t really matter.
I tried to find someplace online that would tell me how to make a moppet cap, but I ended up just winging it. It’s a circle with one single line of elastic shirring sewn an inch or two in from the edge. This was my first time using lace. I like how it turned out.
I didn’t intend to make suspenders. I have a pair around here somewhere, I just can’t seem to find it. So I took apart a couple of those clippy things that are supposed to hold an ironing board cover in place, and used those, with some of Joy’s cape fabric to make something approximating suspenders.
I made Nathan’s felt mask after looking long and hard at a couple mask images I liked. The cuffs and shoe covers are more winging it- and they were less successful than the moppet cap. The tail started out following a free pattern online, but the pattern was utterly confusing. In the end, I made a tapered tube with an extension on the top that I could make into a loop for a belt to go through. Sewing with fur is interesting!
Samuel’s shirt and Nathan’s shirt were thrift store purchases. The ax, Granny glasses, and white hair coloring were bought at the Halloween store.
When I was growing up, few children walked into a store and selected ready-made costumes. My Mom made ours. For several years in a row, I went as a roller skater, with a short circle skirt and leg warmers. (Trick-or-treating is REALLY fun on skates!)
Anyway, I prefer to dress my kids, creatively, myself, to buying some cartoonish thing at Wal-Mart. That said, I totally understand when people don’t
embrace my philosophy. (Samuel was Spiderman last year.)
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Great job, Jo! Thanks for sharing the photos and details with us.
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