Category Archives: Sewing


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R2D2 Pincushion DIY

Star Wars Day was a few days ago so it’s completely fitting to share this R2D2 pincushion DIY I made a few years ago.

I was brainstorming ideas for a crafty gift exchange in an online group. My giftee was a big Star Wars fan and her favorite craft was quilting. Around the same time I’d been browsing CraftyPod and had come across Diane’s plastic canvas needle book with built-in pincushion.

The puffy pincushion immediately made me think of R2D2’s top dome and I wondered if I’d be able to do something similar atop a plastic canvas base. It worked but I did one thing wrong so I’ll tell you what to do so you don’t make the same mistake I did!

You will need:

I started out by making the base, so I could later cut the circle to the proper size. This is easier than making the dome and needing to fit your design for the base into those constraints.

I found some good sample images for R2D2 online and drafted out a cross stitch pattern for his body. If you copy my chart you will need a plastic canvas rectangle that is 26 holes high by 67 holes wide. You can also stitch the body first and cut it out afterwards if you prefer.

Following the chart above, cross stitch the body design onto your plastic canvas. The majority of Artoo is white with some smaller gray areas and some blue.

Once the base stitching is complete separate your yarns into plies and use them single-strand to work backstitch on the outline areas. Black is used for all the main panel shapes and round areas, gray is used on both blue grills and blue is used for the vertical dashes on the front section. Note that the red border is the boundaries of the design and is not stitched.

Using white yarn, whipstitch around the lower edge of the body. Leave the sides and top unstitched as they will be used in seaming later.

I only gave Artoo only two legs in this design as he was standing upright and the third leg would not be seen underneath. I think it would look even better and more authentic if you made him tilted back with all 3 legs visible!

To make his legs stitch the above chart twice onto plastic canvas. When working be sure to mirror the gray segments at the top so the two legs are opposite (see image below).

As before the red designates the boundaries of the design and should not be worked.

Using single strands of black and gray yarn, embroider the outline details on both legs.

Using white yarn, sew the two legs into place on the body, following the placement as shown above. Sew down directly through the two layers of plastic canvas making tacking stitches 1 square high, and following along the sides and top of the legs. Be sure to put the correct leg on the correct side.

Using white yarn, whipstitch the two side edges together. This will join his body into it’s cannister shape. This base structure should be able to stand on its own on the two legs.

Now that you have your base diameter set you can cut out an appropriately-sized ring from your plastic canvas circle.

Lay your plastic canvas circle on top of the body and mark which ring of holes is closest to the top’s diameter. If you don’t have an exact match pick the one that is slightly smaller. I removed the inside of my ring leaving only one hole to stitch, but this proved unnecessary in the end as I did not wind up putting my pincushion through the ring as was done in the inspiration project.

With gray yarn, fill the outside row of holes by stitching up and down through them, then again to fill the alternate holes. You want at least one or two rows of holes filled with gray yarn in case they show later. Also trace your new circle onto a piece of heavy cardstock or foam core and cut it out.

In the image above you can see the size of my original ring and then the one I cut out. You can also see my foam core disk.

Test your alcohol markers on a corner of your white fabric. You want to find the right colors that match your blue yarn while also making sure that your markers won’t feather at the edges. You want a marker that will allow you to draw shapes that will retain crisp edges and not bleed into other sections. With the markers I had on hand and my particular fabric, Spectrum Noir worked best. I liked the color of the Bics better but it bled a little more and I didn’t want to take a chance on ruining my design.

Knowing that the dome would be puffy, I added about 2″ extra to my disk’s diameter and traced out a larger circle. Using a clear image of R2D2’s dome as a reference I sketched out roughly where the various components went, and then colored it all in with my alcohol markers.

Then I cut out the dome. This is where I messed up. I forgot to take into account that gathering the fabric would mean losing at least the outer 0.5″ underneath my foam core disk. I SHOULD have cut out Artoo’s dome leaving a good 1″ minimum of white around the edges. You can leave this outer ring white or alternately you could extend the colors that touch the edges outwards for at least 0.5″.

To create your pincushion you’ll want to thread your sewing needle with thread and pass a running stitch all the way around the circumference of the dome. As you can see in the top right image, when you start to pull on the thread it will gather your dome into a cup shape. Unfortunately mine gathers part of Artoo’s details and they get hidden underneath. You’ll want to arrange your gathers so that it is the excess white fabric that gets gathered underneath and the full dome pattern is visible above.

Once you’ve stitched your running stitch turn the dome over and add your stuffing. Place your cardstock or foam core on top to give your dome a solid, flat base. Then gather your threads tightly and secure in place. You can run extra threads across from side to side if desired.

The last step for assembly is to attach the dome to the base. Use your same sewing thread and needle to secure the plastic canvas ring to the underside of the dome. Then use gray yarn and your yarn needle to whipstitch the two plastic canvas pieces together. You might need to ease in some stitches if you don’t have a direct 1-to-1 line up. It can help to pin the dome in place with locking stitch markers, marking each quarter so that you know the dome is in the correct position. (Be sure that he’s facing the right way!)

With that, your R2D2 pincushion is done! Yours will look better than mine because his whole head will be showing. Still- I’m happy with him and best of all the recipient loved him and sent me a pic later of him put to good use holding her pins.

Happy (belated) Star Wars Day!

This post may contain affiliate links. This means I might make a small commission on purchases made through the links, at no cost to you.


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Super Mario Bros Petey Piranha DIY

Mario Month 2023’s third DIY is a tutorial for a costume/cosplay for Petey Piranha,

This fabulous fellah is Petey Piranha. He made his debut in Super Mario Sunshine and is confirmed to be the leader of the Piranha Plants. While he’s not as common a Mario villain as Bowser or some of the others, our skit had eight dancers and needed a fourth “bad guy” to oppose our four “good guys”. I’ve already shown how we made the costumes and props for Mario, Luigi, Toad and Peach, as well as Wario and Waluigi. We already had a Bowser, and so Petey here made a great final baddie for our little cast.

I started this costume challenge with a visit to our local thrift shop where I was really lucky and found a solid green hoodie to be the basis of the top, as well as a white skirt as bottoms for our female Petey player.

The first thing I did was to mark off circles on the hood to be Petey’s…uh… face spots…? Mouth dots? I’m going to go with “face”. I used an appropriately-sized candle as a template and traced it out with a white colored pencil. It’s difficult to see in the first image (left side) but I also used a regular pencil to loosely mark off a border around the hood opening.

I used a measuring tape to loosely eyeball how high Petey’s yellow petals should be, based on the proportions of the character. I sketched half of the petal shape on a folded piece of scrap paper and trimmed it out until I had a nice, even petal shape of the right size for my hoodie.

The leftover yellow felt from my Wario costume DIY was perfect for Petey’s petals, and so I used my paper template to trace out 24 halves (to make a total of 12 petals)

I used sewing pins to tack two pieces together so they wouldn’t shift around and then with a regular needle and sewing thread I worked a tiny running stitch all around the sides and rounded top of the petal, leaving the flat bottom unsewn.

You can see in the image (below left) how the petal will look once it is turned inside out. Happy with the results, I continued until all 12 petals were stitched.

I turned them inside out and set them aside.

From there it was time to work on Petey’s face. I didn’t have any fabric paint so used regular acrylic paint for this DIY. I didn’t want the paint to bleed through the hoodie so I prepped it by stuffing it with a plastic bag, which in turn was stuffed with assorted packing materials. This also had the benefit of filling out the hood so I had a flat surface to work on. I also protected as much of the rest of the hoodie as I could by wrapping it in an additional plastic bag.

Using red paint I filled in the entire hood surface EXCEPT for those dots I’d traced earlier, and the lip area I’d marked off. The first image is the result after one coat. The second image was after a second coat of red and also after painting the face spots with white.

A cardboard box worked great as a support to hold the hood in a way that wouldn’t disturb the paint as it dried.

While I had the red paint out I drybrushed a bit around the edges of each petal. To drybrush simply dab off most of the paint onto a paper towel or other scrap surface before working on the felt. This will allow you to get the faded color around the inner edge and give the illusion of a blend.

Continuing to work with the red paint, I set to work on the skirt. After tracing out the spots with the same candle as for the face I painted the rest of the skirt, leaving the spots white. This would have been easier had I found a red skirt – I’d only have had to paint white spots. As it goes with thrift shops, however, you get what you get. (“…and you don’t get upset” as my kids’ daycare used to say!)

The final touch for the petals was to use a tiny bit of brown paint and a very thin, very dry paintbrush and give the centers their subtle center shading.

Before leaving things to dry I gave the skirt a second coat of red paint. I noticed the paint was bleeding into the white spot areas (as shown in the bottom center spot on the left) and so I went over each spot with white paint for a more crisp edge.

Once the paint had fully dried I was able to do the final touches. Petey has distinctive lip stripes, similar to those on a watermelon. Instead of doing detail shading with paint I went the easy route and drew stripes with an alcohol marker.

I used more of the yellow sewing thread to sew each petal into place around the hood. Instead of pressing the petals flat and sewing the one edge down I actually whipstitched the full oval of each petal opening down into the hoodie. This kept the petals open ensured they wouldn’t flop around on stage. Remember – just like all the other Mario-themed costumes and props, this outfit had to be durable enough to endure two weeks of quick-change performances, plus dress and tech rehearsals.

The final step to complete Petey’s face was to add his fangs. After figuring out a paper template to give me a rounded cone shape I traced a small paint bottle enough times for each fang and cut the pieces out from white felt scraps. Each circle was then cut into the flat shape that would fold into a cone.

The cones were then sewn into place around the hood opening. Petey’s fangs are actually more inset into his lips but I wanted to be sure the fangs would be visible from the audience so moved them outwards a touch.

Here’s the final costume.

And here it is next to Petey himself. I wasn’t quite sure in the beginning how I’d pull this one off, but in the end he made a great villain in our little dance number and the costume held up throughout without any issues.

Other Mario-themed projects you might like:

This post may contain affiliate links. This means I might make a small commission on purchases made through the links, at no cost to you.


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Super Mario Bros Toad Hat (Head) DIY

For my second post in this year’s Mario Month I’m going to demonstrate an easy DIY for Toad’s hat. I know – it’s been officially confirmed by Nintendo that it’s actually Toad’s HEAD and not a hat…but most people still refer to the white and red bulb as his hat so I’ll be calling it such in this post.

This is Toad:

A costume for a Toad is pretty simple as almost any colored vest, white pants and dark shoes will get the gist across. The main feature of all Toads and Toadettes is their big, pouffy toadstool-esque hat. Whether you call it a head or a hat there’s no doubt that it’s a needed part of any Toad cosplay and here’s how you can make your own!

What you will need:

NOTE: As with the rest of my Mario costumes & props this hat was needed for a stage show which meant it had to be durable enough to last for a number of rehearsals, dress rehearsals and then stage performances. As such while you can use cardboard to do these first few steps I chose to use plastic canvas for extra strength. The plastic might bend but it would be unlikely to tear or break making it more reliable for quick changes where the hat would get tossed around backstage.

The hat needs structure to support its height so I started by aligning two sheets of plastic canvas vertically and whipstitching the side edges together. I repeated this with a third sheet and then tested the fit around my own head as the wearer would be another adult. I marked the appropriate row, cut away the excess and then whipstitched the final seam to create a tube.

I measured the diameter of the tube and traced out a circle of a matching size on a fourth sheet of plastic canvas, then cut it out. I could have whipstitched around the edge here as well but didn’t want to risk mis-aligning the pieces so for an easier option I used some of the white yarn to tie the disk to the tube in one spot with a knot. I then made another knot directly opposite the first so the disk was centered. I then knotted at the halfway point of each side so the quarters were each tied in place. This ensured the circle was evenly placed on top of the tube. Then I continued, knotting in pairs on opposite sides, until the disk was fully attached.

Try on the hat at this point. The tube will sink down so the disk rests on top of the wearer’s head. For the best result the lower edge should fall just above the wearer’s eyebrows, so if your tube is too long trim the bottom edge accordingly.

For the white outer shell of the hat measure the height up one side of your tube, across the top disk, and then down the other side. Add 2 inches for a generous seam allowance (1″ on either side). This will give you the diameter of the circle you will need to cut from your fabric. I didn’t trust myself to freehand an even circle so I divided this measurement by 2 to get the radius and tied a pencil and sewing pin the radius’ length apart on a length of yarn. I pinned the pin into the center of my fabric and swung the pencil around, keeping the yarn taut, to trace out the shape.

I cut a length of white sewing thread about 1.5 times as long as the outer perimeter of my circle and then sewed a running stitch all the way around, about 1/2″ in from the edge. When I got back to the beginning of the circle I snugged up the ends doing my best to keep the gathers even all around.

I inserted the plastic canvas tube into the bonnet-like white fabric and stuffed all around the sides. Don’t forget to stuff below the tube too so the top of the hat gets its round, puffy shape.

To join the fabric to the plastic canvas tube I switched to white yarn for strength and stitched around the open edge of the tube, through the white fabric. It’s a good idea to keep checking the look of the hat as you go, adjusting the gathers or adding more stuffing if necessary.

Here’s the finished puffy tube. I could probably have added more stuffing but I’d ran out.

Toad’s hat has 5 colored spots. I found a bowl that was a good size for the appropriate scale and traced it out 5 times on some red felt. You can sew the spots in place if you like but I chose to hot glue them instead.

Voila! Your very own Toad hat/head.

The hat can be worn as-is or you can add a chin elastic if needed to secure it in place on the wearer.

It fit our Toad cast member perfectly and just like all the other props and costume parts, lasted through all rehearsals and performances without any signs of wear or damage.

Even through vigorous dance routines and quick changes between numbers!

Other Mario-themed projects you might like:

This post may contain affiliate links. This means I might make a small commission on purchases made through the links, at no cost to you.


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Easy Custom Marker / Colored Pencil Holders DIY

If you’ve ever struggled with storage solutions for your markers or colored pencils then this is the post for you! I’m going to show you how to make your own custom elastic holders to fit all your supplies no matter their diameter.

I love this type of pencil storage case. In fact, I own a number of them where I’ve divided up some supplies by type (ie: water-soluble pencils, kid-friendly sets I’ll let my children use, etc).

What the pre-made cases offer in convenience is offset by the limitations of the number of slots and the spacing they provide. Some supplies (like the mechanical pencil and Prismacolor colorless blender) are too thick for the majority of slots and could only fit in one of the few wider spaces inside the front cover…or you want to have room for other supplies like perhaps a ruler or notepad.

Sometimes your supplies all fit but you want to be able to remove the pages to either take only what you need or to be able to see more of the colors at once. They do offer these elastic pencil holders as 3-ring binder options:

but I found they didn’t come with enough room for my purposes and were prohibitively expensive.

The solution? Make your own!

This DIY can be customized for any size binder. I was trying to store over 160 colored pencils plus all the sketch pencils, fineliners, highlight options and blending supplies all together so I went out searching for the largest binder I could find and wound up with this big boy: The Case-It The Dual 2-in-1 zipper binder.

Having found the perfect case it was time to tackle the main issue – the pencil holders. Elastic was an obvious requirement, and thread to sew it down. It was the backing that stumped me for a bit…it had to be easy enough to sew through without heavy duty equipment but stiff enough to support the supplies it was holding. It also needed to be durable so repeated handling wouldn’t wear it down or tear through the binder holes.

Finally it came to me in the form of one of my favorite supplies: plastic canvas!

For my proof of concept sample I didn’t cut the elastic as I wasn’t sure how much I’d need to fill the plastic canvas “page” with slots. Knowing I intended these sheets to go into a binder I left a margin at the left edge. After tacking down the elastic at one end, about centered in the remaining space, I set about figuring how much elastic to use for each loop and many holes-worth of space to leave between them.

Leaving one unused hole between folds works perfectly for most colored pencil and thin marker brands. It also works with gel pens though you will want to position them with the caps on alternate ends.

Tip: Carry your thread up the back to each new stitching location and knot it in place before and after completing each loop. This way if you pull too hard on a loop and accidentally tear the stitching the rest of your loops aren’t at risk.

Once you figure out the spacing that works for you mark off the elastic at regular intervals of your custom measurement and then sew the elastic down through the holes in the plastic canvas.

These sheets are going in a binder, of course, so I marked off where the 3 rings would go and removed the plastic inside a grouping of 4 squares to create a hole. I made sure to inset these holes by at least 2 full rows for structure and stability.

The final step is the tuck under the elastic’s loose end and sew that down, for a neatly finished look as you see in one of the finished sheets above. Because the materials are so inexpensive you can make as many as you’d like and can space out the elastic to fully customize it to your exact needs. This was a super-quick project that took only one evening to make a dozen sheets.

And they’re super secure!

This post may contain affiliate links. This means I might make a small commission on purchases made through the links, at no cost to you.


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Play Furniture and Pretend Food From Recycled Materials

November 15th was National Recycling Day and I thought it would be fun to share some toy accessories that you can make by recycling materials you have on-hand.

This all started back when Henri had received a Zhu-Zhu Pets toy hamster for Hanukkah one year. It wasn’t long before his “pet” needed to have its own house and so we adapted a shoe box into rooms with a garage.

Of course every home needs furnishings and that’s where these projects came in. According to Henri there was a bedroom, kitchen and living room, so I tailored what I made to that, but you can easily adapt any of these little projects to your rooms of choice.

The first recycled materials to be used were an egg carton and a plastic bendy straw. Cut out sections of the carton to create different types of furniture.

The cups that hold the eggs became armchairs (when the upper rim was kept on 3/4 of the edge) and a table (when flipped upside down and trimmed to have legs).

Two of the flat base of the egg cups were cut out to become vessels for food and water, and finally the divider piece that separates the eggs was cut out to become a lampshade.

One of the cup bases was painted silver to become a serving plate and the slightly deeper one had the inside painted blue to appear like water. To make the most out of using what I had on hand (pun intended!) I painted them both with nail polish!

The lamp shade was painted Henri’s color of choice with regular acrylic paints and then set aside to dry.

Once dry it was time to assemble the lamp. You need a base that’s sturdy and heavy enough to support the weight of the shade. You could use wood blocks, a little box filled with rice or sand, or anything else heavy enough. I used a few spare washers I found in my toolbox.

I cut a felt circle for the base and hot-glued the washers on top in descending size order, making sure to keep their holes lined up. I also glued a decorative bead to the top of the lampshade.

The shade was filled with hot glue to set the straw in place and then more glue was used to attach it inside the tower of washers.

With that, the little hamster’s living room lamp was complete!

The bendy bit of the straw was a nice touch, allowing the lamp to be angled wherever the little guy needed.

The silver platter received a coat of clear nail polish to seal it and the water bowl was filled with more hot glue to look full.

To make the pretend food for the hamster takes only three supplies – a pool noodle, fabric paint, and scissors.

That’s right – all these little pretend foodstuffs are actually squishies! They’re really easy to make: simply cut pieces of the pool noodle foam into the general shape of the food item then use fabric paint to make them look like their respective foods. A toothpick comes in handy instead of a paintbrush when working at such small sizes. I scaled my foods to the size of the egg carton “plate” and made (clockwise from top right) pepperoni pizza, chocolate chip cookies, donuts, a cheeseburger, and a chocolate cake.

The food storage bin was made from plastic canvas and yarn scraps.

First I made a base large enough to hold all the food. The lid is the same size but less deep, and the faux latch is simply stitched on top. The lid was sewn to the base all along the back edge but I used the same gold yarn as the latch to embroider 2 fake “hinges”.

The living room furniture was painted black and copper “studs” were added with a paint pen. One neat thing about using the egg cups is that the furniture will stack which makes putting it away after playtime that much easier.

Finally the hamster’s cardboard box bed was upgraded to one with a full headboard and footboard, and painted with gold glitter paint.

I used scraps of white felt and stuffing remnants to make a mini mattress and pillow, and leftover sock yarn knit up quickly to make a colorful blanket.

One evening of crafting and by morning the hamster had his house completely tricked out. Henri was really excited to set everything in place and added more to the decor by painting a rug in the living room and even drawing a TV on the wall!

Bonus – I wanted to take some current pics to show how well these little accessories held up after 6 years and we thought it would be really cute to include Jakob’s REAL hamster for scale. Here’s Dusty enjoying a little nap…

…and here he is foraging in the snack box looking to see what other treats there might be.

These were such simple, quick and easy DIYs to make and became playtime accessories that were loved and used over and over, AND held up incredibly well over the years. I hope this post gives you some ideas on how you can recycle items from around the house and give them new life with a new use.


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Annual Halloween Roundup

It’s October, so that means it’s time for my annual roundup of costume-related patterns and tutorials available here on the blog.

Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how to make Minecraft Steve & Creeper heads.

Next up (with over 420,000 impressions on Pinterest in the last 60 days alone!) is a similar tutorial, this time for making a Minecraft Enderman head along with a diamond block trick-or-treat box.

Both projects include full charts for game-accurate colors and the exact hex codes for perfect color matching!

If your idea of fantasy is less block-based and more magical, here’s a free knitting pattern for an easy scarf in the Gryffindor house colors.

If training a dragon is more your thing, here’s how to make a viking vest.

If you prefer Pokemon to Night Furies, here’s an easy, last-minute Pikachu costume idea.

If your friends-group themed costume runs more Grease than Greninja, here’s how you can make a super simple Poodle skirt.

If you’re looking to visually upgrade some inexpensive props, here’s a demo on repainting plastic swords.

If you’ve got a last-minute party invite to deal with, here’s a SUPER quick ‘n easy Jughead Jones (from Archie Comics) costume tutorial with free burger dream bubble printable!

If your group costume needs accessories, here’s a free tutorial on making Super Mario Bros Mario, Luigi, Wario and Waluigi hats

If you want to take those Mario Bros costumes one step further, here are instructions on making their respective mustaches

If you REALLY want to go all out, here’s the full costume breakdown with instructions on making an entire Wario costume

Finally, if you’ve got enough knitting time on your hands, you can knit my Baby’s First Superhero Costume pattern as-is with cute designs for boys and girls, or convert the chart and the colors to create your superhero of choice.

Find more tips and tutorials on my How-To page!


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How To: DIY Super Mario Bros Wario Costume

All month long I’ve been sharing Super Mario Bros-themed DIYs for my official 2022 Mario Month, and today’s post pulls all the Wario costume pieces together with some final touches to round out an easy DIY Wario costume.

For a refresher, here’s the yellow-and-purple guy himself:

And here’s how my cosplay turned out:

You will need:

To make the Wario hat you can follow my DIY instructions here.

My easy DIY instructions for the Wario mustache are posted here.

Wario’s gloves are a pair of simple white gloves with a rolled cuff and large blue “W”s on the back of each hand. I used an inexpensive pair of winter “one-size-fits-all” stretchy gloves and the same dark blue felt as for the W on his hat.

Because my costume was needed for several performances with quick (and rough) costume changes, I sewed the “W”s into place with matching thread. If you’re not worried about durability you can choose to use hot glue instead. In both cases, however, I would attach the letter while wearing the glove, as if you sewed it while laying flat it would not stretch properly once worn. (The glue or stitches would hinder the gloves’ stretch and the letters would appear wonky and/or possibly detach).

Repeat the process for the other hand.

Note: I’m right-handed, so it was easy to sew the left glove while wearing it, but not as easy for the right. At first I tried to compensate by wearing the left glove backwards on my right hand, so I could continue to sew with my dominant hand.

Unfortunately the results look terrible. Therefore I really recommend wearing the glove on the appropriate hand and sewing with your non-dominant one if necessary. If you go slow and take small stitches while awkward…it’s not impossible, and the results look much better.

Wario’s clothes consist of a solid-color yellow tshirt and purple pants with suspenders. I’ve linked suitable options for all three items above, though for my costume I was lucky and found the shirt and pants at my local thrift store. I didn’t think Amazon would have purple suspenders so I made my own. I happened to have some purple fabric at home so used that, though the color match wasn’t the best.

To make the suspenders yourself, put on the pants and and take the following measurements:

Length: measure the length in inches from the waistband in front, up and over the shoulder, and down the back to the waistband in back. Add 3-4″ to this measurement.

Width: the desired width of your suspenders in inches, doubled, plus 1″.

You will first create a tube by folding your fabric in half lengthwise, wrong-sides out, and then sewing a line about 1/2″ in from the open edge.

Once your tube is secure, carefully flip it inside-out. A knitting needle/skewer/chopstick is handy for this! Arrange the fabric so the seam is in the center and iron or finger-press the edges down to keep the strip flat.

The 3-4″ inches extra length added were for use in attaching the suspenders. If your pants have belt loops, first pass one raw edge through the opening of the claw hook, fold the edge in about 1/2″ and then sew down securely. My hook rotates but if yours is stationary be sure to have the side of the tube with the seam at the back.

Once the hook is attached, fold the other raw edge over as well and then sew it to the pants at the rear waistband, again being sure to have the seam on the inside. If you prefer a less permanent option, you can use claw hooks on the other end of the tube as well, and attach on both sides using the belt loops.

If your pants don’t have belt loops you will need to sew all 4 edges into place.

Wario’s pants are actually overalls with big white buttons but it’s easier to create suspenders and then fake the button look on top. If you prefer to make overall straps then instead of attaching claw hooks you will need to make a buttonhole and then sew 2 buttons onto your pants. I was worried buttons might undo during my dance number so I went for the more secure option of suspenders.

To fake the button look, cut two circles out of white felt and stitch (or hot glue) them into place above where the suspenders attach.

With that, your Wario costume is done! I wore this during a performance with fast quick-changes, so having my next costume underneath was the perfect way to add some padding and give Wario his more rounded physique.

Other Mario-themed posts you might like:

This post may contain affiliate links. This means I might make a small commission on purchases made through the links, at no cost to you.


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How To: Easy DIY Super Mario Bros Mario, Luigi, Wario and Waluigi Mustaches

Today’s post for Mario Month is a really fast and easy DIY for making Mario, Luigi, Wario or Waluigi’s iconic mustaches. You can also adapt the same technique to make any other style of costume/cosplay/dress up mustache you’d like.

You will need:

The first thing you’ll want to do is find a reference image of the look you’re going for. I found this clear picture showing all 4 character’s faces from straight-on.

You can freehand your desired shape onto scrap paper if you like. In my case, I cropped out the mustache portion of each image, scaled it for an adult-sized head (with the same proportions as on the characters) and printed it out.

Once you have your template drawn or printed, cut it out and trace it onto your cardstock. This will be sandwiched between two layers of felt to give the mustache stability. For Mario and Luigi it’s not as important, but Wario’s and Waluigi’s need a stronger construction to keep them from falling flat and limp.

Next, trace your template again, this time onto your felt (image 1, below).

Important- you want to cut out your shape BIGGER than the template (image 2, below). You can freehand this when cutting or trace around your outline and then cut along that new line.

Trace the felt cutout a second time (image 3, above). Then stack your two pieces of felt to be sure they are identical, trimming or adjusting if necessary (image 4, above).

Place your first felt piece with the front (public) side facing down. Place your template on top. Make sure your second felt piece is oriented correctly and then sew the middle of a strip of elastic to the center. The ends will be knotted and trimmed later, though if you prefer you can cut yours to length now and sew the two ends together here for an unbroken loop.

Using the same thread color as your felt, sew the two halves of the mustache together with the piece of cardstock in between. You can use a running stitch, backstitch or whip-stitch the edges. Alternatively, you could hot-glue the two layers together.

The two larger mustaches (Wario and Waluigi) need a bit of extra support to remain upright and angled as in the reference images. (You can see how it pulls away from the face on the right side of the upper image). Try on the mustache and mark the spot where the elastic and mustache should meet (as I am doing on the left side of the upper image). Note: it is important to mark these points while WEARING the accessory due to the elastic’s stretch. Once your spots are marked, sew the inner felt piece to the elastic on each side of center.

Here you can see the final Wario result! The two ends are standing up perfectly and the extra two stitches keep the mustache conformed to the face instead of free-floating. They also help hide the elastic when the accessory is viewed from the front.

The process is exactly the same for the remaining characters.

Here you can see all 4. Wario and Waluigi have the extra stitches on the elastic. Mario and Luigi do not and I think they would have benefited from it.

In all, this was a really quick and easy add-on to these costumes. They held up through 6 full performances and many rehearsals, including rushed quick-changes between numbers.

Other Mario posts you might like:

This post may contain affiliate links. This means I might make a small commission on purchases made through the links, at no cost to you.


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How To: Easy DIY Super Mario Bros Hats

Continuing Mario Month, today I’m going to show you how to make really easy character hats for Mario, Luigi, Wario and Waluigi.

I’d looked at a lot of online DIYs when planning my Wario costume for our Super Mario Bros skit, and I liked bits and pieces of each. In the end I compiled suggestions and ideas from a few different patterns and am sharing it as a tutorial so you can use it to make your own costume or cosplay pieces!

For reference, here’s Wario and his hat.

While it’s very similar to the other 3, his is unique in having the white circle cut off by the brim, and by having his initial oversized. As such I decided to make his first, and then focus on the 3 remaining hats for my castmates.

You will need:

The first thing you want to do is draw a template on paper you can cut out. If you have bowls of the appropriate size then you can trace them, otherwise you can use a compass and ruler.

To save paper, draw your circles within each other. In my original template (above) I didn’t have a bowl with the diameter I wanted, so I traced my largest bowl then manually sketched in another circle about an inch wider, so there’s an extra circle showing. Also my pencil marks aren’t as easy to see so here’s a clean template with dimensions:

These dimensions are for an adult-sized hat but it’s easily customizable to make any size you’d like.

Cut out all pieces from your template. The easiest way to do this is to cut out your largest circle (A) and then cut circles B and C from within A. You can cut square D out from circle C after using it, or out of a scrap of paper (so you can keep all 4 pieces of your template for future use).

If you’re planning to make numerous hats you can preserve your template by laminating it with packing tape as I did for the Warp Pipe. You can also cut it from cardstock instead of plain paper for added durability.

Circle “A” is cut twice. One “A” will be left whole and will be the top of the hat. The second “A” will be the lower half. Circle “B” is cut from inside the second circle “A”. It should be centered evenly and then shifted down a bit to leave one section a bit deeper. (In the image below, you can see the hole is a bit higher and to the right vs centered, leaving more yellow on the lower left side).

If you are making Mario, Luigi or Waluigi hats, you can continue to the brim. Wario’s hat is the only one with a two-toned brim, so I traced half of template “B” onto white felt – “(B)” above.

All 4 characters have a white circle on their hats, so you can cut circle “C” from white felt.

Take circle “A” with the hole in it and position so the deeper section is upwards. This is where the details will go.

Position circle “C” into place (noting for Wario that his is the only hat whose circle is more obviously cut off by the brim) and then use matching thread to sew it into place. (You can also use hot glue, as I did for the other hats later in this post).

The other 3 characters’ initials will be cut from square “D”. Wario is the only one with an exaggeratedly large initial on his hat. Cut the “W” from felt and sew (or glue) it into place.

For Wario’s brim, first I lined up the white half on top of the yellow circle “B” and then cut off the excess. Then I sewed the half-circle edge together, leaving the straight edge open. Next I flipped it inside out and smoothed it flat, and then stitched the flat edge shut.

To easily center the brim, fold it in half and mark the center lightly. Do the same on the yellow circle. Line up the two marks, and keeping them aligned, sew the flat edge of the brim to the hat under the initial.

Place this completed lower hat piece upside down on the whole circle “A”. In the first image I had pinned them together, and the second image is after the stitching is complete.

Flip the hat inside-out and you’re done!

If you find the head-hole too small you can cut it larger, but you want to err on a more snug fit as felt will stretch over time. I used the 6″ diameter for all 4 hats and they fit perfectly, staying in place during 6 performances and multiple rehearsals!

The remaining character hats are all identical (except for color and initial) so I did them all assembly-line style. First cut out all template pieces.

Cut the initials from square “D”. I used scraps from cutting out the largest circle. I also switched to a glue gun for the details as it works really well on felt (though since the hats would be getting a lot of rough usage I stuck to sewing for the main construction).

Glue the details into place…

…fold the brims in half and sew them shut…

…then sew the brims into place. After that just sew the two large circles together and flip.

A final, optional step is to iron the edges to help keep them crisp and flat.

Each hat takes under 30 minutes to complete, making this a really quick and easy DIY.

They make a great addition to any Super Mario Bros costume or cosplay and would also be wonderful party favors for gaming-themed celebrations.

Other Mario-themed posts you might like:

This post may contain affiliate links. This means I might make a small commission on purchases made through the links, at no cost to you.


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Happy Birthday Sweet Seventeen

Seventeen years ago, on September 7 2004, I started this blog. Yes, this creative passion project of mine is officially old enough to be in college and donate blood. It began on Blogger in the boom of knitting/craft blogs that fed blogrolls and Yahoo swaps and RAOK groups.  We’ve seen the onset of Ravelry and Worldwide Knit In Public Day, and welcomed pattern sources like Knitty, Craftsy, Twist Collective, St Denis Yarns and others before having to say goodbye to some of them.

With YouTube, Instagram and TikTok flooding the internet with video-based creative content, running a blog feels almost antiquated. I’ve been asked by friends and family why I don’t switch to another format but the truth is… I don’t want to. I love video tutorials. I follow a TON of craft-content YouTubers, and have saved a huge amount of “try one day” crafty TikToks to my favorites list too, so it’s not a critique of the other formats. They absolutely have their place, especially for some techniques or tutorials that can really only best be shown in video. That said, I still think there’s a place for blogs and photo-based project/pattern support.

My “blogaversary” this year falls on the first day of Rosh Hashana, which is the Jewish New Year.  I think that makes it perfect timing for a long-overdue blog restart. (I know, I know, I’ve said this before. Shhhh!) Coincidentally I was born on was erev (eve) Rosh Hashanna (we won’t say how long ago!) so Happy birthday to the blog, happy sort of birthday to me, and happy Jewish New Year!

To celebrate 17 years in the public craft domain I’ve scoured the site, my notes, folders, and metadata and picked 17 fun, interesting or long-forgotten items from my blogging history.

1-7

Numbers 1-7 are from the archives.  These are posts even I forgot about!  Some are helpful tips, some are free patterns/tutorials, and all are added to the How To section above.

8

Even when I don’t post regularly I get a steady stream of visitors (thanks!) and I’m always curious to see what search terms bring people my way.  So number 8 is my top referrer keywords from back in my Blogger days.  Funny enough it’s a tie between two completely random things that have almost nothing to do with my site: “cute japanese cartoons” & “hangman”.  I’m guessing the former is related to the time I knit a Japanese boy band, but the latter?  NO idea.

9

Number 9 is the results of my top search terms after migrating the blog to WordPress.  Unfortunately/fortunately Google has been encrypting the vast majority of search terms since 2013 so 9771 of my results are “unknown”.  Of the list that remains the top three terms are: “Toothless”, “pocketbook slippers”, and “pocket book slippers”, likely linking back to these two projects (Toothless, slippers).  Wanna know the lowest search result that brought someone my way?  “Long hair cut feet”.  I wonder how disappointed the searcher was to find my post was literally about a long hair transformation??

10

Number 10 is a really cool fact- I’ve had visitors from 170 different countries!  The majority are, unsurprisingly, from Canada and the United States, but rounding out the top 20 are the UK, Australia, Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, Mexico, France, Iceland, Spain, Italy, the Philippines, Israel, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, Argentina, Hungary and Denmark.

11-14

Numbers 11-14 are my the top 4 posts since switching to WordPress.  I had a hunch what these were because they keep Pinterest flashing up on my phone.  What I didn’t expect was that the top post would outrank second place by more than double!

15

I’ve spent the last few months poring over my unshared projects and planning out a blog schedule for the year.  For number 15 I thought it would be fun to look through my folders and see just how old my oldest unshared project truly is. There was a lot to wade through but I found it!  Coming in at over a decade old a crafty hack that you’ll see on the block next year dates all the way back to February 2010!

16

Looking through all those projects was a fun trip down a creative memory lane.  As number 16 here’s a little teaser of a post I can’t wait to share in full…

Any guesses?

17

And finally, for making down this far: number 17 is a picture of me at the same age as this blog.

Whether you’ve been here since day 1 or day 6204, thanks for being a part of my creative adventures. I run this blog for me, but I love sharing it with you. ♥

*All search terms and other totals above were accurate as of the date of preparing this post.