Bam! Pow! Soc! A Very Retro Bat-Holiday

Look at those muscles! Look at that genius Mama who told her children that they needed to put their "muscles" (aka three layers of  clothing) on under their costumes so that they'd look like real super heroes! Look at how I'm sparing you from "Bat-" jokes now that the title is over!

Batman is flexing her muscles but poor Robin doesn't know what's going on and figures we're all celebrating and going "Yay!". Story of his life so far. Enthusiastic sidekick to Sophie's weirdness :)

Fair warning to any relatives clicking here in hopes of cute children pictures, this is the only one I've got. We unfortunately chose that morning for some studio pictures and they were thoroughly sick of this game. Mom has one or two sneaky ones on her camera that I'll ask her to post.

The rest of this is just costume details. Everything is made out of old t-shirts and embellished with felt. I figured if I was putting this much work into them they could at least double as pajamas when I was done!

The Batman top was made by tracing one of her pj tops onto a long sleeved shirt that never fit Travis right. I used the existing hem and cuffs but had to re-make the neck. I made it extra wide for Halloween layering. The belt and logo are felt pieces that I hand stitched on, some of it while visiting friends Thursday night! It was a bit of a close call!

The cape is it's own piece, just the back of a ladies t-shirt with the sides tapered. I did a 2 minute sloppy job of sewing on some snap tape to keep it closed. Not beautiful but this is destined for the dress-up box.

Colour blocked leggings for the bottoms. I spent a million years getting the curves for the "undies" right. (" Mommy, why does he wear his undies over his pants?") It curves up in the front and down in the back, I wish I'd taken a photo of the other side to show you. The blue a the bottom are his boots.

I was a bit lazier for Robin. A $1.49 thrifted toddler t-shirt was the base. The giant (inaccurate) felt applique is to cover a design on the shirt. The collar and cape are from another thrifted toddler shirt (2$) and sewn right to the neckline. I'll un-stitch the cape before he gets to wear these to bed of course.

And the rear view.

After all of the grief I went through drafting the "undies" curve on Sophie's costume I got lazy with Deacon's and just traced the lines from hers onto his smaller leggings pattern. Bad move. It loses most of the definition when you cut off the edges of the curve. Oh well. The green t-shirt was from my stash and the beige was another $2. The Batman shirts were from my stash and the felt was less than $1.50. Halloween cost me 7$ this year. This is why I spend all my time sewing!

Wondering why Robin's boots curve down? I was aiming for a curved V shape, like the top of his elf boots but put it in the wrong place :)