One-Hour Homemade Infant Batman Costume

It was a very last-minute decision to dress Liam up for Halloween.  I thought about it for weeks, but we really couldn't afford a costume, and I wasn't sure that I would have the time to put one together.  Plus, I kind of feel like it's cheating to take your baby trick-or-treating when they can't eat the candy.  And I didn't really want a bunch of candy laying around because I knew I would eat it.  And, to be honest, Halloween kind of snuck up on me.

But when I was at work on Wednesday, everyone was giving me a hard time about it.  And I realized that I could take him trick-or-treating on campus (they do trick-or-treating in the dorms for the community) and just take Liam around and show off his cuteness (I work with all the Resident Directors, RAs, etc. and the students that work in my office were begging me to dress him up and bring him to see them).  So I just decided to go for it.

First, I browsed the Spirit Halloween store website, and found the cutest ever batman costume.  But I knew that the chance of them still having one in stock at the store near us was nill and it was over $20, and I knew I could make one for less.

So off to Hobby Lobby I went.  

At Hobby Lobby, I got:

• 1/2 yard black knit fabric ($3.50)
• 2 pieces yellow felt ($0.50)
• 2 pieces black felt ($0.50)
• sticky velcro squares ($2.99)

Then I swung by Walmart and picked up this black zipper hoodie for $3.88 (and he can wear it again!).  

So total cost for this costume was about $12.

I printed out some pictures of bat symbols and cut them out - one big one for his chest and a smaller one for his belt.  I traced the big one onto yellow felt and cut it out and traced the small one onto black felt (with a pencil so you can see the outline!) and cut it out.  Then I cut out two long pieces of yellow felt and attached them for a long yellow belt.

Note:  It is really hard to cut felt!  My edges were so jaggedy, but I didn't really have time to care because trick-or-treating was starting in like 45 mins.

Finally I cut out two little triangles for bat ears.

Then I got to velcro-ing.  I folded the triangles down and stuck them to the top of the hood so they would stick up a little bit like bat ears.  Then stuck the big bat symbol to the front of the hoodie and attached the belt at the front and the back, with the small bat symbol at the front.

I cut a quick cape out of the black knit fabric with longer tabs of fabric that would tie around his neck.  If I would have had more time then I might have tried to make a face mask (though I doubt he would have kept it on at all) and probably would have cut the cape with a zig-zag edge cause that would have rocked, but there really wasn't time.

Then we assembled!  We already had black sweatpants and black and yellow striped socks (from a Steeler's outfit) that matched perfectly.

The belt fell off kind of quickly, I think from me carrying him around.  And he doesn't like to have his hood on, but everyone could still tell that he was the best super hero ever!