What is your quest? To find candy!

This week's contest, ahead of Halloween, was to create a kit for a costume that fits on a yard of fabric. It took me a long time to come up with a compelling idea - what possible costume could I come up with that isn't already available commercially? And if someone is crafty enough to want to sew together a costume, why would they buy one of these on Spoonflower, why wouldn't they just sew one from a pattern?

Having a toddler, I definitely wanted to make a toddler-sized costume. I ran through some of the classic costume ideas of yore - vampire, ghost, cowboy, knight. That last one led me to the idea of heraldry on a shield, and that occurred to me as a fun way of personalization. I could provide the pieces for a plain shield and tabard, and a bunch of different symbols to cut out and put on the shield.



There are a couple of other interesting touches I hoped would add appeal. The tabard is mainly yellow, to be as high visibility as possible. Also, I included pieces to make a neck facing for the tabard, but you can actually make the whole thing without any sewing at all - just cut everything out with pinking shears! And finally, I put all the symbols in the lower left, so if anyone just wants to play with those and not the whole costume, they can get them on a fat quarter (or most of them on the 15" square decal). So I'm quite pleased with how it all came together.

This came in 23 out of 47, with 200 votes - a moderate placement, but within the top ten of most votes of any of my entries. My favorite other costumes were the raven hood and matryoshka doll. I also really liked the feather cape/mask that won.