How To: Make a Lucy (from Peanuts) Dress

This year for Halloween, I decided my son with his big ol' round, bald head should be Charlie Brown. From there, this took off into a whole family costume theme of the Peanuts gang. Even my parents got in on it!

I decided to be Lucy Van Pelt, Charlie Brown's nemesis. I'm definitely not as mean or blunt as Lucy, but I sure admire her confidence!

Five easy steps to creating a Lucy costume for pretty darn cheap:

1. Buy supplies:
• Two blue t-shirts. One will be the body of the dress, and one will become the skirt part.
• Black permanent fabric marker. Or just regular ol' Sharpie will do. If you want the black marker to wash off, however, you can just use a washable marker.
• Matching blue socks, if you're going all out.
• Cheap black wig. I found mine at Goodwill and prayed it was clean.
2. Cut top off of second shirt. You'll be left with a tube of a shirt, and this will become the skirt part of the dress. You can adjust the length of it by cutting it shorter.
3. Sew the unfinished (cut) side of the shirt tube to the whole shirt. I did this by turning the tube inside out and lining it up with the finished edge of the whole shirt.
   
4. Add some "poof" to the sleeves by pinching/sewing the top outer part of the sleeves together (I found a finger width to be perfect). Do this with the shirt inside out. I also pinched and sewed the bottom outer part of the sleeves together to try to replicate Lucy's puff sleeves.
   
   
   
5. Draw on the cartoony dress details with your marker of choice. I added the front buttony lines and sleeve poofs. I was too lazy to make a separate collar for the dress, so I drew that as well. I used a permanent marker since I didn't think I'd be reusing this dress for another purpose. 
   

There are some great hair tutorials out there if you don't find a black wig or don't want to spend the money on one. I tweaked my wig with bobby pins to try to make it more Lucy-like and cartoony.

For the shoes, I wore the plainest I had. I intended to make shoe covers to turn them into saddle shoes, but I ran out of time since I procrastinated and did this a couple hours before trick-or-treating with my fam.

I used the cut-off top of the second shirt to make a sort of bow (it was really just a knot) and safety-pinned it to the back of my shirt. Lucy has a big bow in back, so I wanted to replicate that look.

And to really make yourself identifiable as Lucy, make some sort of cardboard sign to represent her psychiatric help booth.

Happy Halloween!