Halloween holds many opportunities for those of us who enjoy costumes. But it also comes along with the chance of disappointment when you can’t find that perfect costume. Luckily, depending on the costume, someone else has already had this problem. The trick then is to use their advice and experience when attempting to make that costume. Of course there are costumes that are still, technical skills wise, more difficult than others. This costume will be somewhere in between.
This Halloween I made a costume for Greg from Over the Garden Wall. He’s a funky little kid with a lot of spirit. It only makes sense that this costume matches his personality. That being said, there are a few ways that this costume can be done.
Image via Twitter
For the simplest costume, you could always go a female Greg and make or buy a green jumper dress like this one from Hot Topic.
Image via Hot Topic
But let’s say that you do want the full effect of his costume. Personally, after gathering a white collared shirt, black shoes, and white leggings, I was stuck on the overalls. Over the Garden Wall has quite the cartoony style, which can make it difficult to translate into real life. So, as mentioned in our earlier article, the first step is to do a quick Google search to find out if anyone has done a tutorial for this costume before. Hint: you’ll probably find better results if you use the word “tutorial” in your search.
With just this quick search, more than 8 results popped up immediately, most of them were focused on the teapot hat, though. After sorting through a few, I settled on this one by Novachan. This is a pretty great tutorial because she includes a link to a free, printable pattern for the shorts part of the overalls and a good explanation on how to make your own pattern for the bodice. Hint: if you use the printable pattern then use abs of tape on the corners and middle of the lengths and widths of the paper to make sure you have a nice, flat pattern.
Image via Novachan
One thing about this costume though is that it doesn’t look a lot like overalls. It definitely subscribes to the cartoony look. If you don’t want this look then there are some other options.
It can be extremely difficult to find overalls in this exact color, but you can either buy a cheep pattern for overalls or use a pair that a friend has turned inside out to make your own pattern. The trick here is the make sure that you add about an extra inch to every line of your pattern to account for the seam. Also make sure that you label the pieces carefully so you don’t forget which one is which. The best way to do this is the use a piece of fabric chalk, but a pencil will suffice if you don’t have any. Also! Make sure that you wash all your fabric before you start cutting. This way if it is going to shrink it will do so before you start cutting.
Image via Author
This gives you a bit more of a realistic costume, but is still pretty technically advanced. If you’re running low on time or don’t feel confident enough then you can attempt to find some green overalls. Finding green ones is difficult, let alone green shorts. So, you can either dye a different pair gree, which I don’t have a lot of experience in, or, if you can find some green overalls, make them into shorts. This still requires some work but a lot less. You cut the legs of the overalls off around the knee. Then, with the overalls inside out fold the edge up once. Iron it. Then fold it up to whatever height you want the shorts to be and use a whip stitch or a sewing machine to place a seam across the the top of that fold.
Image via Author
Next is the heat pot hat that we skipped over a bit earlier. For this are a lot more tutorials available than Greg’s overalls. Some people, like Novachan, use an actual teapot. Others will take lighter, plastic toy teapots, remove some of the necessary components like the lid, and spray paint silver. Both of these methods will get you a nice, realistic looking teapot hat. But, if you’re going to be wearing this hat for a long time, you might want something that sits a little more securely on your head. For this, you can make a hat out of gray foam or heavy card stock and some hot glue. Pictured above is the rough pattern I used. Based on experience (pictured blow) you might want to try this out using some paper before you dig into your nicer materials.
Image via Author
And that’s that. All the other parts of this costume can be pretty easy to come across in a store or through another quick Google search. Good luck and Happy Halloween!