How To Make A DIY Twinkie Costume For Your Baby

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How To Make A DIY Twinkie Costume For Your Baby

His 1st Halloween

Although this was way back when he was a teeny little baby at 3 months old, it still brightens my day every time I see this picture.

I miss him being so sweet and little, and he still is. But he is less dependent on me now.

I thought it would be really cool, at the time, to make a DIY Twinkie costume for our baby boy to celebrate his 1st year of life.

A little tongue in cheek humor was due for our family, especially after a tumultuous hell ride of a pregnancy and the first couple of stress-inducing months in the NICU before and after his lung surgery.

Humor is the best medicine:

I find that humor is often the best medicine to cope with the most difficult things in life.

So, here was my first attempt of changing the rest of the narrative for our little family using my creative outlet by making this cute little Twinkie Costume for my 1st born baby boy.

Below is a list of materials that I used to re-create this budget-friendly DIY Twinkie Costume for my son, check it out.

Materials Needed:

• 1 large clear plastic sheet (free at the entrance of your local home improvement store)
• Yellow blizzard fleece material (about $2/sq. ft. at JoAnn Fabrics, 1/2 sq. ft. is plenty)
• 1 spool of white elastic band ($1.09 w/ tax at The Dollar Tree)
• 1 pack of Sharpies markers, mainly just the red & blue sharpies will do the trick.
• 1 sheet of white typing paper 8.5″x11” 
• double-sided tape (to adhere the white sheet of typing paper to the back of the plastic)
• a white crocheted baby hat or any plain white beanie hat for babies (imagine that this will be the cream filling 🙂 )
• 1 spool of shiny red ribbon
• white sewing chalk
• a pencil
• tape measure
• packing tape
• a well-fitted one piece swaddle blanket
• baby mittens
• sharp sewing scissors, thread, & sewing needle

Optional:

• or just use a sewing machine, if you don’t want to sew anything, resorting to a hot glue gun may be a viable option too.

Instructions for the Twinkie Costume & Mittens:

1. First, fold your yellow blizzard fleece material in half on a flat surface.

2. Grab a well fitted one-piece zip-up swaddle blanket that your child can fit into.  This will be your template to create a pattern for your child’s twinkie costume.

3. Trace and outline it on top of the yellow blizzard fleece material with your white sewing chalk. But remember to leave ample room at the bottom, about an extra 6-8 inches so that you can sew in the red drawstring ribbon, like a garbage bag. (Think like SweatPea- the baby from Popeye The Sailor Man! 😉 )

4. Now, using the sewing scissors, cut out your newly traced pattern from the yellow blizzard fleece material.

5. You now have a cut-out of your twinkie costume, ready to be sewed together! Let’s set it aside for now and trace out the mittens.

6. Now, grab a pair of those cute little baby mittens you have on-hand from the time that you first brought your baby home from the hospital. You know, the kind that keeps them from scratching up their little chubby cheeks. You’ll need them to use as a pattern to make a new pair of twinkie mittens for your baby Twinkie to wear!

7. Using the leftover scrap material from the yellow blizzard fleece material, fold it over and trace the outline of 2 pairs of mittens onto the yellow blizzard fleece material and cut them out.

8. Now take the cutouts of your new Twinkie costume and the cutouts of your new yellow mittens and sew the 2 seams together. Remember to leave the opening unsewed so that you can put it on your baby.

9. At the bottom hem of your twinkie costume sew in the shiny red ribbon to make it a drawstring at the bottom. It should look like a garbage bag around your baby’s feet. I did this to keep his feet warm when we took him out for trick or treating that day. He also had socks and baby shoes on, but I wanted him to feel warm and cozy in his little Twinkie sack. 🙂

10. Also, remember to measure the dimensions of your baby’s wrist. You will cut out 2 strands of white elastic to match those wrist measurements so that you can get a comfortable fit around your baby’s wrist for the yellow mittens. Sew the elastic band onto the ends of each yellow mitten.

11. Note: You can also glue the seams together with hot glue if you do not want to sew them.

12. This will be a great time for a dress fitting after you’re done sewing the seams of your Twinkie costume and your yellow mittens.

13. Next up, we’ll be making the plastic packaging part of our baby Twinkie costume.

Instructions for the Twinkie Plastic Covering:

1. You will need a long plastic sheet, a red sharpie marker, a blue sharpie marker, and a white sheet of typing paper for this part.

2. I was able to find these large plastic sheets from my local Lowe’s Home Improvement Store.

3. They come on a huge roll that looks like a giant heavy duty roll of saran wrap, usually located outside the entrance doors as you enter the store.

4. Oftentimes, we’d also find that there is roll of twine and a razor cutting machine close by as well to help customers load products into their cars to keep them clean and secure.

5. We use these plastic sheets all the time whenever we need to buy mulch, potting soil, etc.

6. So keep a look out for them the next time you need something from your home improvement store.

7. You can also recycle these plastic sheets and make crafts out of them, like what we are doing here with the Twinkie packaging!

8. Measure the length of the plastic sheet to match your baby’s height.

9. Fold the plastic sheet in 1/2 and measure your child’s head with a tape measure.

10. Then cut out a semi-circle at the fold of the plastic sheet.

11. This is the opening that will fit over your child’s head, so you want to be sure that it is wide enough to do so.

11. Now, this is the part where we do some eye-balling with our pencil and paper. Sketch out the heart and the Hostess logo onto the white typing paper laying it horizontally, instead of vertically. (This is also referred to as landscape view on your printer.)

12. Tape the white sheet of typing paper to the back of the front flap of your plastic sheet cape. You will also want to reinforce the edges of your plastic sheet cape with packing tape while you are at it, to keep it from accidentally tearing.

13. Fill in your sketch with color. Trace over your pencil line sketch of the Hostess label with the red and blue sharpie markers on the front flap of the plastic sheet cape.

14. Afterward, carefully draw out the word Twinkies on the front flap of the plastic sheet cape.

15. Let it dry for about 1 hour and then go try out the costume on your baby, enjoy!