Let the wild rumpus begin!
I studied the book for an hour before deciding on a game plan to tackle our Where The Wild Things Are Costumes: Moishe and Tzippy. I started with Moishe (the wild thing with the black fur and striped body) and searched the greater St. Louis area for a faux fur black trapper hat. After locating one at Bass Pro, I stopped at the craft store to pick up felt for the face and horns. I cut out a felt “forehead” and hand sewed it to the front flap on the trapper hat (so I could easily snip the stitches and use the hat as a normal hat) and used fabric glue to attach the eyes, nose, and teeth I cut out of the felt onto the forehead.
Then I cut out horns, hand stitched them together (to make them 3d) and stuffed each horn with Kleenex before hand sewing those onto the top of the hat as well. This took much trial and error to get the placement right and took effort to keep the horns from flopping over. After the hat, all Moishe needed was a gray and orange striped shirt, which I found at Old Navy.
Tzippy gave me a bit of a challenge. Since this wild thing is covered in fur, I knew I had to tackle a fur dress. I found a sewing pattern on sale, so I used a shoulder dress pattern. The fur was incredibly hard to sew and left a huge mess all over the room, but in the end, it turned out great. Making this hat was very similar to making the first one, however, I used a plain brown beanie because I could not match the fur from the dress with a trapper hat. I again cut out a forehead, but this time I glued it to the hat and added eyes, a nose, and teeth out of felt. I used thick red yarn and glued a few layers all the way around the hat for the hair. I completed the costume with a brown long sleeve shirt, a belt, brown tights, and brown boots.
Please note: I did not make the Max costume in the picture. I had my hands full with these 2 costumes and decided it would be easier to buy Max online.
When out in our costumes, we were recognized a few times, but a majority of the people had no idea what we were. That’s probably our fault for trick-or-treating in the neighborhood that we did (we went for quantity, not quality). It would have been helpful to carry to book around with us. But I absolutely loved the way our costumes turned out!
SO AWESOME!!!! Are you interested in selling the Moishe hat? Seriously!
SO AWESOME!!!! Are you interested in selling the Moishe hat? Seriously!