Bowser, Alligator and Red Riding Hood

This year was full of requests from my children about what they wanted to be for Halloween.  Most of which were requests for custom costumes.  But alas only one got that this year.  Cory has been wanting to be Bowser from Mario Bros for a long time and would have been the most devastated to get anything other.  Aiden saw the alligator costume and fell in love with it and Hannah made a perfect Red Riding Hood, and not the silly little girlish one!
I did a lot of research on what the bowser costume should look like and finally got it together.  I had the yellowish knit in my stash forever and this was the perfect application for it.  I used an ottobre hooded sweatshirt pattern for the top, adding cut up bias tape for the red hair in between the seam of the hood.  Then I glued on some styrofoam cones with hot glue for the horns.  The pants were green fleece and based on an existing pair of pants.  The shell was the most difficult.  I ended up using a small bead filled pillow, round, and then I cut out the green fleece slightly larger to make the shell.  I then added some white bias tape around the edge of the shell.  Its hard to manipulate the stuffed pillow under the sewing machine for this part, lol.  I added some string to make the shell like a backpack, because with the spikes he wouldn't be able to ride in the car with it attached to his back permanently.  After adjusting the strings I added styrofoam cones to the back placing them strategically.  Even after numerous trick or treating events last week we never lost a cone.  I glued them both on the bottom and also ran a bead around the edge of the cone to help cement it in.  The costume is not a perfect match but certainly made my boy happy.  I hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween!