Cowboy Woody Infant Costume

I'm kinda weird when it comes to costumes (check out my Elastagirl Costume). I like to have everything be an exact replica of the movie or exactly like the picture in my head. It's hard to accept not having them come out perfect because their handmade, but they are closer to perfect than the cheap store bought costumes.


The Shirt
Materials:
Yellow Paint or Dye
Red Paint
White Onsie (You can save time with buying a yellow onsie, but I couldn't find any that were plain)

The baby didn't wear this much, so I wasn't spending too much money on it, so I used what I had. I had a white onsie and the paint. The paint dried very crunchy so I only painted parts of it, and I actually just used acrylic paint and washed it before he wore it. Anyway, paint or dye the shirt yellow. We painted the front down to the waistline, the arms, and a little of the back by the arms. We also left white circles for the buttons. After it dried we painted the red stripes. We just free-handed the lines. Before putting it on the baby we had to stretch it out a whole bunch because of the paint.

The Vest
Materials:
White Fabric
Black Fabric (Something that won't fray, like from an old t-shirt or felt)

I used a sweater vest that someone had given us to use as a pattern, you can use a onsie or something else, and cut out where the arms would be. I laid the vest flat and drew around the entire vest and cut out two of those in the white. I then folded one of them in half and cut it down the center. I put those two pieces together and cut a v-neck shape and rounded the bottom. (I'm sorry I don't have pictures of the process for you, I don't feel that I am explaining this well without them but I'm sure you can figure out something!)

With the black fabric cut out cow spot shapes. It's just like a cloud and can be whatever you want. This was the funnest part!

With black thread on the top and white thread in your bobbin sew on the cow spots wherever you would like. Since they won't fray you don't have to worry how pretty your sewing is as long as they are on there ok! I went with circle-ish shapes getting close to the edges. Ok, they were very rectangular circles, but you can't tell!

Now you can sew the pieces of your vest together. Put the outsides together and sew the two top sides and the two bottoms sides. The vest was so easy and very cute!

The Boots
Materials:
Pleather (I should say vinyl, that's what it really is but I scored at Goodwill and got it for just a couple bucks, you can use a cheaper plain brown fabric or something else if you want)
Baby Boot Pattern(I used McCalls M6342)
Embroidery Thread(Optional)
Sharpie

After the pieces were cut out I added design to the boots. There are little lines on the toe and a cactus on the outer side. I started embroidering, but then decided I liked the sharpie look just as much (it was more toy-ish) but I did a little of both and made the boots match. I also added tabs to both sides of both boots. The designs were copied from a picture of the character at disneyland but you can find other pictures online.

Mine were hand sewn because it is hard to maneuver the sewing machine around these tiny shoes. I took shortcuts with the pattern (pleather won't fray so I didn't do any unnecessary seams).

After the fact I realize that although they were cute the boots were the biggest waste of time, because they were quite a bit time consuming and the baby kicked them off every time he wore them and I couldn't even keep them on long enough for the picture.

The Hat
Materials:
Pleather

You might want to go find some sort of pattern for the hat. Or if you are making this for a bigger kid you can find them cheaply everywhere. My dilemma was that my kid has a small head, so this is done kind of oddly. A soft lining would have been nicer for him too.

If you are making your own I used a dinner plate and a bucket hat that fit him to come up with a pattern. Cut out two of the dinner plate. Cut out one of the size of the top of the bucket hat plus an inch or two around. Cut out a rectangular shape that is the height of the bucket hat and long enough to go around the smaller circle (that you made from the top of the bucket hat) plus a couple of inches. Very exact, huh?

Sewing this gets kind of crazy too. If you have a better way, I would love to see it! First sew the rectangular shape to the smaller circle. Start with the right sides together at the edges and try to hold the circle as you feed the rectangle under the presser foot. Go slow and it should be easier than it seems. When you finish there should be ends touching each other. Sew those together with the right sides touching.

Next, put the right sides of your dinner plate circles together. Sew the outer edge. and then turn it inside out. Set the top part of the hat in the center of the dinner plate circles (this will be your brim) and mark where the top part of the hat is going to be. Now cut a small hole in the very center of your brim and cut a line to where you marked. Cut a few more lines from the center to where the top part will be. It should look like this.

Black is the dinner plate piece, the gray is where you marked where the rest of the hat will be, and the red is the cut lines.

Now you should be able to sew the rest of the hat to the brim. Fold the triangle shapes under the rest of the hat (trim them after) and sew the middle piece of the hat to the brim. Now you can trim those triangle shapes from the brim. I told you, it was kind of a tacky way of doing it but it worked.

The Bandana
Materials:
Red T-Shirt Fabric
White Paint Pen

I cut out a piece of a red t-shirt. I guessed on the whole pattern. I looked at a bib, but made it long enough that you could tie. I zig-zag stitched the edges and then my husband drew white X's all over it.

The Belt
Materials:
Pleather
Belt Buckle

I was thinking about a cute "Woody" copy, but I was on a time crunch and couldn't finish everything I wanted to do, so Grandpa's belt buckle worked. I sewed a long strip of the pleather and stapled the buckle on. I wouldn't do that for an older baby that gets into things but mine wasn't doing to much of that then. I made sure the bottom of the staple was going towards the jeans so it wasn't out to catch on anything. I punched a few holes in the pleather and called it good!

The Jeans
Materials:
Jeans

These were the easiest of all! I didn't do a thing, we already had them!.

The Extras I Didn't Do
If I had time I would have done these:
-Buttons to the shirt (I left some white circles when I painted but real buttons on the sleeves would have been cool
-A Sheriff Badge(I was looking for sticker that they give out to kids but never found one in time)
-Pull String (I had one of those retractable name badge things I wanted to rig up under the vest and just have a plastic circle showing)