We had a Rollie Pollie and Orphan Annie for Halloween. I could have saved a lot of time if I had bought costumes, but who sells a rollie pollie!?! My kids had such creative requests, I just couldn’t turn them down. Believe it or not, I was very inspired by this tutorial to make the Annie dress for my 4 year old. I took a pattern-making class during college, and I haven’t done much with pattern making since then. A lot of what I learned came back to me as I made my own patterns. I traced my daughter’s dress to form the bodice, sleeves and collar. Originally I planned on making a step-by-step tutorial, but I got crunched for time and quit taking pictures along the way. Here’s a few pics to get an idea of how I made the dress. It was a lot of work, but a great challenge, and I only spent $9 total for both costumes!
The hard part about sewing is that it’s so time-consuming. I try to involve my kids in the process so I don’t feel like I’m ignoring them, and they also get to learn a little bit. Here is my 2 year old ripping fabric for the tubes of her rollie pollie costume. I let my 4 year old help me on the “gas pedal.” When I say GO, she pushes the pedal and is really good about going slow, fast, and stopping when I tell her to. When we went out trick-or-treating, we loved telling people that the kids helped make their costumes.
The finished products! I was really happy with how they turned out, and fit. They wore their costumes all week long.
