The Making of a Mummy Costume, Part 4

I finished up Carolyn’s Mummy costume today! (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)

A finished mummy mask.

The hardest part of this entire costume was the mask.  Luckily Carolyn had today off from school for teacher conferences – I needed her to model this pretty frequently.  This time, instead of only sewing strips from the bottom up, I also sewed them from the neck, over the top of the head, and back down – like you would if you were wrapping your head with bandages.  This was kind of tricky and I’m not 100% thrilled with how it came out, but I think overall it’s a reasonable facsimile of a mummy mask.

The thumb hole and hand wrappings.

Finally, I had Carolyn try on the shirt so I could figure out the end of sleeves/hands part.  I cut a slit between the cuff and shirt for her thumb to stick out, then wrapped strips around the cuff and hand-stitched them down.  It takes up the excess sleeve material and acts almost like gloves – hopefully I won’t have a chilly mummy for Halloween!

Hanging bandages on the shirt.

This costume seemed so simple on the surface, but it’s all in the details: I let bits of strips hang down while I sewed them on, and shredded the ends so there weren’t finished selvedge edges of the fabric showing.

Finished mummy pants!

I also took a rather big tuck in the back of the pants – the downside of buying pants a couple of sizes to big is that they have a tendency to fall off as the mummy walks!

Mummy, er, "sitting" on the bench.

With all the details done, it’s time for a “beauty” shot.  That’s one good-looking mummy costume!  Total, I spent $26.  I probably could have spent a little less on one of the awful store-bought costumes we saw, but this is much, much better.  Carolyn is super happy with how it turned out, too!