Rainbow Halloween Costume for Three

For Halloween, our family of three dressed as a rainbow. 

 

Even though I am completely incompetent with the sewing machine, this costume was easy enough that it only took me a few hours to make. I made some mistakes along the way, so you get to benefit by learning from my errors.

The biggest error? That image above is a lie. I digitally flipped it to get the colors in ROYGBIV order. The actual photo has us in VIBGYOR order. Even though I actually thought about how to get the colors with red at the left and purple at the right, I still messed it up. Sigh. Affiliate links below. 

Rainbow Halloween Costume for Three

Materials:

• 6 identical t-shirts (one each of ROYGBIV), one size larger than you wear
• Clover wonder clips (SO much better than pins)
• fabric scissors  (I use the left-handed version!)
• chipboard
• 2 paper plates
• Folk Art paint
• 2 extra jumbo craft sticks
• silver thread
• glow pony beads

Steps:

Fold each t-shirt in half as precisely as you are able. Mark the center with clips or pins, then carefully cut the each shirt in half. 

After all the shirts are cut, pair them together red-orange, yellow-green, and blue-purple. Here's where I went wrong. I chose the wrong half of each shirt. I should have red and yellow on the left sides, and orange and green on the right sides.  

I strongly recommend you lay out all the shirts in order to make sure you are using the correct sides. You might luck out and get a t-shirt brand where the front and back are symmetrical, but ours had a dip in the front with a very high back that would have been weird to wear backwards. 

When you are sure you have the correct order, it's time to sew. Carefully match the fronts of the shirts together and clip one of the sides in place. 

Sew that seam, being sure to backstitch at the hem and the neck to secure the seam. Clip the second seam together. Sew that seam, then turn the shirt right-side out. Repeat the process for the other two shirts. 

To make the rain cloud, cut a cloud shape from chipboard and paint it grey. Glue it to a jumbo craft stick. Tie glow beads onto pieces of silver thread and tape them to the back of the cloud so that they dangle like raindrops. 

To make the sun, cut 8 triangles of chipboard to make the sun's rays. Paint them and the backs of two paper plates yellow. Glue one plate to the craft stick, then glue the rays to the front of that plate. Glue the second plate on top to sandwich the rays between the two plates. 

Then you just have to make sure you stand next to each other in the correct order through the entire costumed celebration! 

This was a fun costume and so easy. Half of each shirt is leftover, so in theory I could either sew up the correct rainbow, mix-and-match the colors to make random two-tone shirts (opposites on the color wheel?), or come up with other way to use the fabric. I'm open to suggestions!

I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween!