{Baymax Costume} Make Believe Week

Today starts Make Believe Week over at GYCT Designs! I was so excited to participate, along with a big group of other sewing buddies!!!! Go check out all the details over at GYCT.

 Ever since my kiddos have seen Big Hero 6, they have been a bit obsessed with it. What better way to make believe than your favorite cartoon character, right?!?! So, here I am with a tutorial on doing just that. 

 

I started out with a drawing of what I wanted to make and just went from there. Because I don't have any actual pattern pieces here, you could easily use the creative process to create your child their own costume from their favorite character.

 

 We like to play dress up here in our house, so we had a vest that I traced to make my pattern from. The rest of the pieces I free handed from my drawing and looking at pictures online of all the details that Baymax has! Hopefully in the near future, I can get the pieces digitized for everyone to use to save a little time. I used felt (double thickness) for this project because of the stability and structure. I realize over time and many hours of play that it will end up getting a bit pilly and fuzzy, but I figured that was ok...you'll be able to see the love ;) Enough talking....let's get to the fun part now.

Supplies you will need:

• 1 yard black knit elastic
• 1/2 yard premium blue felt 72" wide
• 1 1/2 yards premium red felt 72" wide
• coordinating thread

Trace and cut out four fronts and two back pieces from your newly created pattern pieces.

Next you are going to draft out all your pattern pieces for the rest of the costume and cut them out of the felt:

• 4 wings- red
• 4 arm shields- red
• 2 mask- red
• 4 small wings for mask- blue
• 6 accent circles (2 small, 2 medium, 2 large)- blue
• 4 vest fronts- red
• 2 vest backs- red
• 1 front belt- blue
• 1 back belt- blue

Below are the wings, arm shields, mask, and little wings for the mask that I free handed for Baymax according to my drawing.

For the arm shields, I traced the general size of my kids arm and just connected the lines and made a little thumb cutout.

For the mask, I measured from temple to temple on all of my kids and averaged out the number so that it would fit all of them. I cut out a rectangle that was 10" wide by 6" tall and rounded the corners for the general shape of the mask.

I drew with sharpie where I wanted to make the cutout for the eyes.

It's coming together nicely...don't worry. You are almost done with the cutting and can get on with the fun part ;)

I cheated a little bit for the circles and used my die cutting machine to get perfectly round circles, cause let's face it...those are a little tricky!

The last part you will need to cut is your belt. Once again, I just checked out my drawing and recreated the general shape of what I found online.

I cut the front out in all one piece so that it was symmetrical, and then cut it in half for each front side of the vest. Once I laid it over my pieces I had to trim up a little to match.

Here are all the pieces cut out and ready to go. Are you seeing the vision now? I used a walking foot on my machine since I had so many layers that could easily shift during sewing. So that I wasn't switching thread as often, I went ahead and sewed the blue pieces on their correct spots on the top layer only. 

At this point you will go ahead and sew your vest together. I started out stitching the two layers together on all pieces except where the shoulder and side seams will be.

You will now want to sew the side seams and shoulders together, making sure to backstitch a few times at the beginning and end. This is where the walking foot really helps since you will be going through 4 layers (6 while passing over the belt pieces). My machine handled it no problem. And you are now finished with your vest!!! Woohooo!!!!!

 

 Onto the wings. Go ahead and sew the two layers together. I also added some stitch lines along the wings to give them a little more detail, but this is totally optional!

I then sewed the wings onto the vest back piece just below the shoulder seam, sewing just along the previous seam lines on the wing. Make sure to backstitch a few times since I am sure these will get tugged on a bit.

They can now soar in the wind!!!!

 On the arm shields, sew the two layers together and then attach your elastic. I measured against my child to figure out the lengths of elastic and decided to use 3 pieces of 4" elastic and they fit both my 3 and 7 year old just fine. My original intention was to sandwich the elastic in-between my two layers, however since it was so short I just couldn't make it work and look nice, so I just top-stitched it. If anyone has a trick for this, please leave me a comment below!

 

Whew...we are almost there now! Grab your little wings for your mask and go ahead and sew those together. When sewing together your mask, mark where you want your elastic to go and sandwich it between the two pieces, encasing the ends. I used a 9.5" piece of elastic and again it fits both my 3 and 7 year old perfectly! Grab your wings and sew them onto the mask at the temple area, sewing along the previously sewn seam line.

At this point you are DONE, however I went back and added a few detail stitches on the vest and added the red circle (where Baymax's memory chip goes), but this is totally optional however it gives it a nice finished look! You may as well since you have come this far, right?

Well, what do you think? You made it...it looks fantastic...now grab your kiddos and let them assume the role of BAYMAX!!!!!!

This is my middle child who is not a huge fan modeling pictures for me, but he is so in love with this costume...he came up with all the poses himself.

Have any questions? Feel free to leave me a comment below and I will try my best to answer it. Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to check out the other posts today and all this week.

Here is a Pirates Treasure Map from Phat Quarters

And check out this Adventure Belt from Radiant Home Studio!

{Courtney}