Snowstorms, Tornadoes and Other Clever, Weather Halloween Costumes
Halloween is happening soon, and these costume ideas are sure to draw attention to you wherever you go at the end of October. Readers, beware, if you want to have a quiet evening at the Halloween party, most of these costumes are not the ones to be wearing (with the exception of the rainbow and clouds). These costumes are attention-getters, and draw out all kinds of comments and humorous activities from your fellow party-goers.
Hurricane Symbol Costume
The hurricane symbol is created on poster board, or foam board, get the two of largest ones available, from an office supply store, or from an educational supply store, and carefully draw the hurricane symbol in erasable pencil on the board, diagonally, to use as much of the board as possible. Cut the paperboard carefully to match the shape, and poke a hole in the center with a pencil, then cut the circle out in the center, to look exactly like the hurricane symbol.
You may, for additional effect, air brush paint, paint with glitter gel, or poster board paint or even shoot paint balls at the poster board on one side only, outside, on top of yesterday’s newspapers for color. However, this costume, as is, will attract enough attention that you don’t need to. If the paint is water-soluble, you will neat to use a spray paint fixative or polyurethane paint in order to ensure that your costume paint does not melt onto someone’s furniture.
Note: If you are shooting paint balls at your hurricane target, be certain to allow eight feet of distance, and thoroughly cover the entire area with newspapers, and make sure that there are no breakables anywhere in front of you.
The two hurricane symbols may be connected with cloud shoulder straps, and a cloud-shaped hat.
If you like, give yourself a name, such as Gustav, Ivan, Fay, Rita, Charlie, or Jeanne, in writing, and glue this across the hurricane symbol.
Wear this costume over a long tee shirt and leggings or jeans and a tee shirt, or another Halloween costume, if you prefer.
Tornado Costume
This costume is created on a white, beige or gray twin or full-sized bed sheet, folded in half, using magic markers in gray, brown, black, and red to draw the swirling pattern of a tornado. Be sure that the costume drapes nicely over your shoulders, and does not touch the floor.
That was great, now, what do I do to make this a costume? Golly, you could do a lot of things with this, such as cut out the outline of the tornado, and hold it in front of you in front of a full-length mirror to make sure that the costume will look “right”.
You will also need about ten yards of piping, or fusible binding, to give the costume a good effect. There are two sides to this costume, which can be worn, sandwich board style, or may be glued or sewn directly onto an old tunic or dress.
Attaching little toys to the tornado makes for added effect and illustrates the possible damages, of your tornado, especially broken toys.
Snowstorm Costume
If you can find an inexpensive quilting fabric or chintz print in white, silver and blue or white, silver and red or white and black of a snowstorm, or snowflakes, this will help to illustrate the costume. A bag of polyester stuffing is used to create clouds, and a few bags of stick-on felt or styrofoam snowflakes make handy three-dimensional items to create the snowflakes effect. Three yards is the most you will need for this costume. If you have purchased extra fabric for the costume, you have Christmas stocking material.
Measure yourself, find out how wide and how tall you are. If you are 30″ wide and 60″ tall, you should purchase fabric on a 54″ roll, and be certain to purchase at least 2 yards of this.
Drape the fabric to cover your body, to be sure that there is enough material, as well as to make sure that the fabric is not way too wide or way too long for your costume. Cut out a neck hole from the fabric. for your head, by way of folding the fabric as you would drape it over your body, then, folding it in half again, and carefully cut an opening, making a circle, at the center of the two folds, erring on the side of making the neck hole too small rather than too large.
If you have no time, and are planning on wearing the costume only once or twice, use fusible binding to iron on the hem of the neckline, the hem of the fabric, then, the seam of each side of the costume, leaving 12″ open at the top on each side for your arm holes. When you iron the fusible binding, you might want to try this with a thrift store purchase iron, even if you are planning to use the towel method of ironing the fusible binding on carefully, as well as something other than your best ironing board cover.
Two yards of metallic or gray fabric, or even a few large squares of felt and a few small squares may be used to make silver or gray clouds to add more effect for your costume instead of the polyester stuffing. Or, if you like, you may use the polyester stuffing sparingly to add dimension to the clouds sewn onto your costume. You may hand sew or glue these cloud shapes onto the fabric of your costume. Be certain to leave about two inches of room open if you are planning to add polyester stuffing to your clouds, and then completely glue together, or hand-sew, or both the remaining opening. Then, arrange all those stick-on felt snowflakes onto your costume, your own way, to make the costume look attractive. If you have extra snowflakes, these make great Christmas decorations.
If the sandwich board costume idea does not appeal to you, look in your sewing box for a tried and true long tunic or nightshirt pattern to use, and follow the fabric and sewing instructions to make the base of the costume. If you don’t have a sewing box full of patterns, visit a thrift store that has a crafts section to look for a few decades old, or even ancient patterns that will not be being used at the upcoming event to use. The price range for these patterns will be anywhere from a nickel to a dollar per try.
Rainbow
1/2 yard of fabric in each of these colors will create a rainbow; purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red – if you want to add a 1/4 yard of indigo, or a 1/4 yard of pink, to your costume, do so. This is a total of 3 1/4 or 3 1/2 yards of fabric for the costume, or 1 5/8 yards – 1 3/4 yards for each side of the costume.
The rainbow costume is brightly colored, however, is not going to make you the center of attention. This can be sewn into a tube, 54″ or 60″ long, leaving the bottom foot of the fabric unconnected.
Connecting the costume with 1 yard of multi-colored fabric trim for the neckline and shoulder straps is the quick and easy way of connecting the costume.
However, the purchase of 1 yard of silver material to make a cloud- shaped hat, as well as smaller, cloud-shaped shoulder straps, is really the way to go.
Cloud-shaped hat
Fold over the 1 yard of silver or gray fabric, measure your head, add one inch for the hem, cut length of fabric to size, crosswise from the fold in the fabric. Cut the bottom and the sides of the fabric, leaving the top connected. This hat will need to be sturdy, even for one wearing, so be certain to sew and glue this piece together, or use fusible binding and sew this piece, as you will more than likely, be sharing this costume piece with other people.
Hope that you had fun reading this article, and I wish you the best of success with your costume-making endeavors.
