My nephew turned 5 last week, and for his party he wanted everyone to dress up since it was so close to Halloween. As his Aunt, I have an obligation to do his bidding. I wanted to do something scary and fun, but since a lot of little kids were going to be in attendance I decided to err on the side of fun. And what is more fun than a muppet?!
Super Grover has always been a favorite of mine, and I wanted to go all out, but I had a very limited budget, like $10. I bought some felt, fun foam sheets and a yard of red fabric. On hand I had a blue sweat-suit(not sure what you'd cal it), old glasses and random crafting supplies.
For the eyes and nose I traced a small oval embroidery hoop. It was the perfect shape, and large enough for me to cut additional eye(pupil) holes by tracing a spool of thread. I used some stretchy black fabric remnants and taped them on the wrong side of the foam. To add a bit of curvature to the nose I used a spoon and rubbed it lightly back and forth on the wrong side, until the foam started to curve up at the edges. Once finished, I glued the nose to the eyes and taped them onto the frame of an old, unused pair of sunglasses.
The body was super simple. The hoodie has a zipper up the middle, so when I sewed on the lightening bolt, I only stitched along the half that covered the left side. It was stiff enough on its own since I used two pieces of felt glued together, but as an extra precaution I glued some velcro dots to the two upper corners of the bolt on the right half. The big "G" is more fun foam that is simply glued to the felt bolt.
The cape was simply draped over my shoulders and held in place by a couple of stitches. I didn't have any yellow yarn, so I braided embroidery thread together to make the wrist ties and neck tie. It all stayed in place just fine.
I wanted to make a helmet instead of buying one, though I did look around. I had no idea what I was doing since I've never made any kind of headgear out of felt. I think it turned out fairly well for a first attempt. I used 4 sheets of felt, shaping it around my head and pinning it as I went along. It's all blanket stitched together with about a mile of thread. I made the top and side "buttons" out of scrap felt and sewed them on last. The visor was originally going to be functional, but as I had only a few hours left to finish before the party, I decided to just glue strips of black felt for the slits, and then sewed the visor to the helmet. It ended up a lot pointier than I'd have liked, but I feel it was a good first attempt.
All in all, it was a fun little project and the kids at the party recognized me, even if the adults didn't
And now, the obligatory "Grover smashed against a brick wall" shot since he is such a lovable clutz.
