Coolest Popeye and Olive Oyl Halloween Costume

My husband is in the Navy and was able to re-enlist on Halloween, (in costume!), so we made these Popey and Olive Oyl Halloween costumes for the ceremony, and well, for Halloween.

Here’s what we did:

Popeye. We patterned the top after the US Navy’s dress blues jumper. I used black, red, and blue twill. The collar I had to construct after I’d sewn the jumper. I added black bias tape and iron-on star patches for the embellishments. The blue on the sleeves is slightly stuffed with poly-fill. The pants are made using a vintage bell bottom pattern and twill dyed royal blue. I made the pockets with flower linings and extra large belt loops. The buttons are large plastic buttons that we spray painted yellow, and the belt is an extra uniform belt that my husband had, dyed yellow. The hat is one of my husbands uniform hats, and the shoes are his regular brown shoes.

My husband made the corn cob pipe from frozen corn-on-the-cob that we had in the freezer (he microwaved it to death) and some scrap wood we found in the garage. His spinach can is made out of a large can of chili (that my husband ate in one sitting-ick!), an old poster re-painted with a spinach label, and some green scrap fleece machine and hand sewn into spinachy clumps. The arms were the hardest. We spent a good afternoon discussing and planning how to do it and eventually we purchased several pounds of Crayola’s Model Magic. We sculpted the arms to the size we wanted over his and then very carefully used a razor blade to cut them down the sides (I only gave him one little cut!). They were placed on my husbands arms, covered in thin strips of white knit (to cover the transition and even out the tone), then covered with three layers of tights and panty hose, and finally, tattoos were drawn on the forearms using a sharpee.

Olive. Olive is by far the easier costume. I used a basic shirt pattern to make the shirt from a slightly stretchy polyester blend knit. I added the sleeves and collar using a similar white knit. The skirt is an older version of the US Navy female dress blues that I found at a thrift store. I added a wide yellow gross grain ribbon. Long white socks and a pair of my husbands old boots, spray painted brown, finished it off. I wore the skirt higher than my natural waist because it made my legs look longer, and because my 5-month-pregnant-belly fit better that way.

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