A Monkey Tale

I LOVE making costumes. They are probably my favorite thing to sew. I bought my first sewing machine for the main purpose of sewing Halloween costumes. I have made a polar bear, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Little Bo Peep, a lamp to go with Bo Peep, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and Snow White.  But when Cricket, my third child came along, I found very little time left to make them.

My friend, Ms. J, has an adorable 2yo, we will call him Cheeks, and she wanted to find a sock monkey costume for Halloween. She found one online but it was a little “odd” looking (and sold out). Yeah, it kind of looked like a sock monkey, but the hat had the face. I have always found costumes where the character’s face/mouth is on the hat portion of the outfit to be a little weird. I mean, am I the only one who thinks it looks like the child has been swallowed by the character and is now peaking out of it’s neck? No? That is just me?

Anyway, Ms. J found an online tutorial on how to make a sock monkey costume and wondered out loud on her Facebook wall if she would be able to put something like that together. Since Cricket is 4 now, and fairly self sufficient, (as in he can use the potty himself) I jumped at the chance to help her. I didn’t really have any other costumes to make this Halloween. Freckles is 10, so she is far too cool to go trick or treating anymore. Dimples wants to be Han Solo and already gathered clothes from his closet that will work. Cricket is more than happy to give Clifford his third Halloween go round.

The online tutorial looked easy enough. (you can find it here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Sock-Monkey-costume-for-toddler/) but it turned out to be a little trickier than I originally thought. I think the main problem was that I used “official” sock monkey socks, (which I found at Hobby Lobby) which were likely less stretchy and smaller than the work socks she used. But I think it still turned out OK.

Now I didn’t take pictures along the way, so if you want to make it yourself you will have to follow the other tutorial. I know… noob blogger mistake. :\  I promise to try to get better at that. But the tutorial is a really good starting point, and I recommend it. A change to the original design that I made was that it is a stand alone costume. Meaning that I did not attach it to a set of Pjs like the tutorial. I did however add snaps along the back, to make it easier to get into. The key is to find an outfit that doesn’t stretch too much when the child puts it on, and use that as a pattern when you are laying out the socks. I ended up using 4 pairs of socks for what would be about an 18-24 size outfit. I did not have the same amount of leftovers as the tutorial, so I needed another pair to make the hat.

Changes I would make if I did it again… I would try to add red to the bottom area, like a real sock monkey has, and I would have made the ears out of the heather brown portion of the sock, rather than from the heel and toe. I also would have shaped the bottom better, so it was tapered on the sides, again, so it looks more like a real sock monkey.

Cheeks was not too sure about the fitting process. In fact, he cried like we were sticking him with pins. : (  But Ms. J reports that after dressing for their costume party, Cheeks had a change of heart. He ended up chasing his own tail around. :D I can’t wait to be his personal seamstress next year!