I made Minions

Okay, I love the movie Despicable Me.  Honestly I love those little minions.  I think that they are so funny and I love to hear them talk.

I also have 3 boys, sooo what would be better than having 3 minions for halloween?   So that is why I made 3 minion costumes.  They are adorable!

Okay so what you will need:
Roll of 1 inch foam (I used 2 rolls for all 3 of my minions)
Bright yellow spray paint
2 packages of black pipe cleaners ( I cut mine in half)
Velcro
Hot glue gun
100 Hot glue sticks (not really 100 but you need a bunch)
1 Round cardboard container (I used an oatmeal carton)
1 Sheet of white felt
1 Sheet black felt
Scissors
Fleece (black, blue, and yellow)

First you must put on the movie, for two reasons.  Reason number one, inspiration.  Reason number 2, keep the kids entertained while you make the costumes.

I started out by wrapping the foam around a boy to see how big of a piece that I needed.

Then just cut it out.

Next you have to notch the top of the head so that when you glue them back together to make a rounded dome shape.  I found that 7 points is really good.  You figure out where the tips should be by taking the  length of you foam and dividing it by 7, measure that out.Then I measured down 3.5 inches in the center in between the points so that I had a reference point of where to cut down to.  I took out some of the excess on the inside corners so that it would be a little easier to glue together.

Glue them together.  Only glue down about 5 inches from the top on the back seam, this way your child can enter the costume from the back.  The points wouldn't stay perfectly together, and kept leaving gaps at the very top.  I used a little duct tape on the inside to hold it all together.  I am not too proud.  This bothered me at first, but turned out to be a very happy accident later.  Love that!

I took my oatmeal container and cut it into round strips.  This I later used as reinforcement for the eye openings,  It also gave me a template to use to cut out the eye openings.

Then I used the duct tape to mark out arm holes, which I then cut out.

Out in the back yard, I used the seed spreader to hold my creation while I spray painted it yellow.  (Remind me to apologize to the Hubs for the spreader!!)

Yeah, I spray painted my wedding ring too (Sorry about that too babe)

Anyhoo, back inside I started to make sleeves.  I didn't have a pattern or anything.  Sometimes you just have to go all commando and figure it out.  So I measured the length of his arm from shoulder to wrist.  Then I took the yellow fleece and draped it around his arm where a sleeve would go and pinned leaving plenty of room for movement.  Then I just stitched it up.  It was not rocket science.

Then I just eased it into the armhole with hot glue just as I would if I were sewing sleeves into an armhole.  Although it was  a little more difficult without a basting stitch though I am sure that you could baste it first and it would be a lot easier.  I am impatient and just winged it.

For the pant I was a little more intimidated to sew these without a pattern, but I was too far in at this point to back out.  Plus, I am pretty sure that McCalls does not have a pattern for the project that I was making.  So I just went at it like a tailor and figured it out.

I figured out the circumference of my minion divided it in half, and added a little for seam allowance.  I cut 2 pieces of the blue fleece to the dimensions that I figured out.

The nice thing about foam is that the fleece sticks to it so it made it a lot easier to eyeball my cuts.
So I stuck the two pieces of fabric to the foam with the seam in the middle.  I put the kid into the costume so that I could make sure that the crotch would work out and to pin up the legs and to check for length.  After I pinned everything up and left the back partially open (for costume entrance) I sewed up the pants.  It worked really well...surprisingly!

Then I glued the pants to the foam top.  I made a little overall flap out of a rectangle of fleece.  I cut out the black and white Gru emblem out of  felt and glued that on the front of the overalls.  Then I cut out 1 inch strips to be straps of the overalls and glued those on as well.

The picture above shows the next step already done, I trimmed out the eye hole.  I cut long strips of black fleece and lined the opening.  I also glued on strips to make the strap of the eye goggles.

Now all you have to do is add velcro to the back opening.  Then just glue on the hair.  Remember how my points wouldn't stay perfectly together?  Well I used the gap to glue the hair into.

That is my pipe cleaners laying by the gap before I glued them in.

I have two done, and the third is half way.  I will finish it up in no time, seeing as I have already made two I pretty much know the steps now.  I will post some pictures of all three of my minions on Halloween!

In the movie the Minions are all different, so I was not too concerned with them being exactly alike.

I can tell you that my boys love these costumes!!  And who do they think is the coolest mom ever?

This girl right here!!  What is better than that?  Nothing!!  Totally worth the hours, and the 53 hot glue gun burns!
If you have any questions, or if I left something out feel free to leave me a comment and I will try and answer them.
If this is your first time here, Thanks a bunch for coming!!  Feel free to leave me a comment, I have my Minions read them to me :).

Sunny

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