Personally, I have never been a fan of dressing up for Halloween. I might be alone in that, but it always felt like too much pressure. I never felt like my idea was creative enough! Enter children, and everything becomes a million times cuter. Pair together cousins for a group costume idea, and the possibilities are endless! We’ve done some cute combos in the past, and this year, we landed on Mary Poppins. There are obviously multiple directions we could take it, but we decided to go with the carousel scene.
My mom always made us the coolest costumes when we were kids, but I’ve never been great with a sewing machine. The costumes for Bert and Michael used fabric tape and was just the right amount of DIY for me to handle. I found the tutorial on the Talk of the Trains blog, and she explained everything perfectly. Her website even contains affiliate links for the suit, hat, can, gloves, bow ties, etc.
I used the links on the blog to purchase the white suit and other accessories on Amazon. Then I made a trip to the craft store to get the ribbon I would need. I bought one roll of each ribbon, and that worked out pretty well. The only color that I almost ran out of was the red. I didn’t do the back of the jacket, however. If I had, I would’ve definitely needed more ribbon.
The most important part of the whole thing was the fabric tape. I was annoyed at first because the tape was thicker than some of the ribbon. I thought that glue would be easier, so I tried Gorilla super glue, fabric glue, and even glue dots. With the liquid glue, it left a dark spot (see the ribbon on the bottom in the above photo), and with the glue dots, it left a very noticeable bump. The fabric tape was definitely the way to go. I’ve linked the tape that I used here. Important to note, I used four rolls… I had to keep going back to buy more because I ran out of it so quickly!
I did the collar of the jacket first, and then I laid out the rest of the ribbon before I started actually taping them on. I made sure to leave plenty of ribbon on the ends to fold under. The collar and sleeves took the longest because I had to cut those ribbons at a certain angle. Even with those cuts, they never quite lined up perfectly. You couldn’t tell when the kids were wearing the jackets though! The nice thing about the fabric tape is that you could move them around a bit if they needed straightening. I also worked around the pockets to keep them accessible.
For Bert’s costume, I was able to follow the pattern on the Talk of the Trains blog pretty closely, and it was really nice having a photo to go off of. I was on my own for Michael’s costume, and his was harder for a couple different reasons. One, the colors of the stripes were kind of random. I needed a yellowish green and a light teal of some sort. I also needed thinner widths. I couldn’t find exact matches, but these are the ribbons I went with.
The thin ribbons were totally necessary but also super annoying haha. I had to cut all the fabric tape in half, lengthwise. It would stick to the scissors and drive me nuts, but again, still the best option. The above picture shows how I ended up using the tape on the thin ones. It was totally worth it in the end, it looked so good! I couldn’t find a good photo of Michael’s hat, so I just kind of made that part up too. I laid the two thicker ribbons next to each other and laid the fabric tape over top. Then I used the two thinner ribbons to cover the sticky part of the tape. I did the same thing for the bow, and I attached the bows to the hats with a glue gun.
These jackets are awesome, and I’m honestly thinking we’ll keep them for dress up purposes. We still have the ice cream cart from Kate’s birthday party, so I’m picturing a little corner in the basement where the kids can dress up and play with the ice cream/food cart. What made these jackets even better was when the boys paired up with my nieces dressed like Mary Poppins and Jane, and Kate was a little penguin…. Best costumes ever! My mom even constructed carousel horses, and each kid got their own. I seriously can’t get enough of it. Happy Halloween!!
