A Spoonful of Sugar

 After much indecision and wavering back and forth, Rugrat decided this year that she wanted to be Mary Poppins for Halloween.

Initially, I planned to do my best to put together a costume for her. I even purchased a pattern when they were on sale at Hobby Lobby that I thought I could use. 

But, then, I happened across a costume of the type she wanted on Amazon. This one:

Link

And then, they kindly put it on sale for 40% off (it was still early for Halloween). All of the reviews said it was a good quality costume (one of the other reasons I tend to make them is because they are NOT typically good quality) and the extras really made it worth the [regular] price. So, we decided to order it rather than make it.

It was as described and I was impressed.

The one thing it did not come with, however, was the carpet bag. Rugrat insisted she needed a carpet bag to make it right so we still had some work to do. The question was how to get hold of a carpet bag. It's not like they're just sitting at our local department store luggage section.

First stop, hit up the thrift stores. We figured any kind of similar style overnight bag would work well enough. No luck there unfortunately. I guess people don't really have overnight bags so much anymore?

We did, however, find this.

I think it cost us $1 or less. It had been marked down. Apparently, people don't really use garment bags anymore either.

It did, however, provide enough fabric to make our carpet bag and Rugrat was find with the outer pattern. 

Next, I had to figure out how to put it together. I took a gander at this video. He goes through the making of a couple of carpet bags with an eye towards authenticity. We didn't really care about authenticity so much as that it looked right. But he had measurements that I could use. So, onward and upward.

I chopped that sucker up and measured out some pattern pieces, then sewed them together to get the box bottom of the bag.

The garment bag's outer fabric was a very thin canvas so it didn't have much structure on its own. I should have put interfacing on it but I didn't think of it until too late. 

So now I had the body of the bag. What next? Oh yeah. Some way to hold it.

The lining of our garment bag was a black vinyl, also very thin, that would make some very nice straps. So I went to it.

Then I had to make a place to put the straps.

Again, it didn't have as much structure as I had hoped using that canvas would give it. But I just happened to have an Amazon box that fit in the bottom perfectly and gave it just the right amount of  sturdiness.

I think it turned our alright. If I wanted it to be something I used on a regular basis, I would probably go back and interface it as well as line it. But I made this with the intent of only using it for her costume. Being able to take out the box in the bottom and fold it flat makes it easier to store with her costume. So I was pretty happy with it in the end.

And Rugrat was pretty happy with it too.

Sweet!