Year 1 Unit 1 - How I made 4 costumes in one day, for less than $20

If you consider yourself a seamstress you will want to stop reading right now. :-)

I only had one day to sew costumes for our unit celebration last weekend, and I had 4 to make (Little Man used a Biblical costume from when his sister was his age and needed it for a church program, so his was done. Yay!). So nothing I made is going to win any contests. Still, they look pretty good in the pictures, don't they? Proof positive that you don't need to spend much time or have much expertise to do simple costumes!


About 4 years ago when we were getting ready for our very first unit celebration (a medieval feast) I went to the Salvation Army thrift store and bought several solid colored top sheets for about $3-$4 each. Those sheets served us well as medieval "tunics" (no sewing at all, just slits for our heads cut in the middle of a fold) and now was the time to turn them into something else. Every single costume except Little Man's used to be a sheet! The only exception to that was the colorful swirly blue fabric I purchased to make the High Priest's ephod.

The Egyptian costumes were the easiest. Daughter G's was a large piece of white sheet folded in half, with a slit cut for her head and then sewed up the sides. Son L's was just a long strip of sheet material wrapped around his waist and pinned. Ta-da!


For the other two Biblical costumes I modified a bathrobe pattern that I already had. We needed two layers for Moses' costume (robe and sleeveless tunic on top) and for the High Priest's costume, three layers. So a total of 5 tunics, some with sleeves and some without. To save time I cut the tunics out two at a time. Below you see the white fabric for the High Priest's robe and the beige fabric that became Moses's sleeveless tunic.


If one layer needed to be shorter than the other, I just folded back the pattern, cut across the short one, and then put the pattern back to cut the longer one.


I never changed thread color. Everyone got red because that's the robe I sewed first! I finished very few edges.


And that's how I made 4 costumes in one day.

While I did the sewing, daughter G worked on the accessories. She is the queen of costume accessories and I couldn't have done this in one day without her! Here she is making the beard that Moses and Abraham shared. It is just cotton balls glued onto a form that she made from a sheet of printing paper. She curved it slightly so it would fit around a face, and measured on a real face frequently while working.


She sewed a loop on each top corner out of embroidery floss to fit over the ears.


Here is Moses wearing it!


The High Priest's costume took the longest simply because it was 3 layers, and because I took the time to hand sew small bells on the bottom of his blue tunic. This took longer than any of the machine sewing, but really added authenticity, and I did it while my husband and I watched a movie so it wasn't too boring.



Son G made his breastplate out of yellow posterboard and colored buttons. He used a page in The Rose Guide to the Tabernacle to help him know which color of button to use for each gem, and how to place them in the proper order.


He also made his shofar out of yellow posterboard and a balloon. We followed the directions in the book Old Testament Days, but I have to say, it didn't work that well for us. We ended up taking the balloon out and using the mouthpiece from my husband's trumpet instead. That worked great!



I made the High Priest's turban out of yellow posterboard and a plastic Target shopping bag! We cut a strip of posterboard long enough to go around his head, folded it in half lengthwise, and then inserted the bag into the fold and stapled it shut.



The front.


And the lovely target symbols on the back! :-)


Here they are! Two Egyptians, Moses, Abraham, and Aaron the High Priest.


2 yards of fabric for the High Priest's ephod: $11.50
package of bells: $3.99
time spent cutting and sewing: about 9 hours
memories made: PRICELESS!