The Scarves of Christmas Past Costume

I love creating an original Halloween costume for our school Halloween Parade every year. As a teacher, I’ve received dozens of scarves as gifts throughout the years and I wanted to use them in some fun way as a costume.

I came up with “The Scarves of Christmas Past” for a costume based on The Christmas Story by Charles Dickens and his Ghosts of Christmas Past. Designing it cost me nothing and it was easy to put together. Plus, it was a blast looking through all of the scarves that I’ve received over the years.

The completed costume.

Materials

70 scarves (you could always borrow a few from friends).
Two sturdy belts (1-2” wide).
A fun hat (Any crazy hat will work. I used a Scottish tam and put a feather in it).
Christmas labels.
Any kind of string, yarn, or elastic to make the loops for the labels (I used red elastic).
Safety pins (to attach the labels to the scarves).
A cat toy and 1 piece of card stock for the sign: “The Scarves of Christmas Past”, I used the font Snell Round hand but any cursive font would work (printed twice).

Belt Choice

I chose two slender belts to loop my scarves around (photo 2).

Two slender belts are best.

Looping the Scarves Around the Belts

I took one of my belts and wrapped a scarf around the middle of it. It’ll work no matter which way you sync it. Here’s a photo of the first scarf wrapped around the belt (photo 3) and when three had been looped onto the belt (photo 4).

I continued to wrap my scarves around one of the belts until it was completely filled up, saving enough room so that I could hook it around my waist. I tried to put like colors together (all the blues, then greens, etc.) but you don’t need to do this if you don’t want to bother with that.

I repeated the same process with the second belt. I now had one belt with scarves to go around my waist, and another that went over shoulders.

A belt with one scarf looped around it.

After three scarves.

Adding Holiday Gift Labels

I randomly added holiday gift labels to scarves using parents’ and friends’ names. I couldn’t remember who exactly had given me which scarf, so I just added labels here and there, with the names of friends and family members on each label, along with my name.

Holiday gift label.

Additional Add Ons

With both belts of scarves in place, I then wrapped a scarf on both of my lower arms and two more around my neck, added the Scottish tam, and the sign.

I made the sign out of construction paper and stapled it to an old cat toy. I printed the message “The Scarves of Christmas Past” and glued one to both sides of the sign.

The Sign

Tah-Dah!

The costume is a tiny bit on the heavy side, but it’s really cozy for cool-weather parades! The kids in school loved it, and I know all those scarf lovers out there were dying to try the idea out using their own scarves.

The Finished Costume