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Funnel Cake and Churro Couple Costume

This project started as our costumes always do: what would best fit our body types? My husband is tall and skinny whereas I am neither. Given my fondness for churros and the inherent hilarity of food costumes, we chose a state fair theme. A funnel cake was chosen as a good shape and fun costume to make.

I was on my own for inspiration because my costume was unGoogleable. So I started out with a blueprint of sorts calculating how much tan felt I would need, gathered a buttload of coupons, and headed to the fabric store.

From there, it was weeks of sewing and stuffing tubes, making triangular churro “channels”, handsewing things I realized wouldn’t fit on my sewing machine, and coating everything in some sort of paint or glitter. The main materials consisted of tan felt, poly-fil, the heaviest interfacing I could find, remnant bin jersey (to sew the channels to), white fabric, and sewable foam.

Lots of spray glue was involved in trimming the churro. Then a coat of glitter Mod Podge and a spray bottle of diluted brown paint for cinnamon. I also made a wrapper from remnant bin gabardine fabric and used elastic to attach to the arms.

I sewed the foam to a circle of white fabric and glued foam board to the back for stiffness to make a giant paper plate for my back. This also saved me from having to make twice as many felt tubes to coil around. I brushed on light gray paint to imitate the edges of a real paper plate (my reference plate eventually became a cute fascinator!).

I hand-stitched the felt tubes in strategic places to the plate, leaving room for my head and arms, then sewed the tubes to each other in a random pattern so the weight was evenly distributed. Then I used a liberal amount of white paint to brush on “powdered sugar”. The felt creates the perfect powdery texture when hit with stiff bristles.

Having leftover felt, I cut some out to cover a (miraculously perfect-fitting) sweatsuit I found for $6 at a thrift store. I frankensteined the sleeves to a white t-shirt so my torso could be “plate”. Then I painted it the same way as the tubes. For extra ridiculousness, I gave the same treatment to an old pair of shoes with the help of spray glue (I don’t think I’ll ever feel my fingertips again!).

To complete the theme, I whipped up some simple dog costumes (for our pups Spaghetti and Lulu). I used a $1 shower curtain liner and some scraps to create “bags” of JR Donuts (delicious cinnamon sugar mini donuts that most Iowa fairs have). I printed the logo, cut it out, and Mod Podged it on.

Because I worked so hard on these, I got a friend to take some professional photos of us at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Enjoy!

Funnel Cake and Churro Couple Costume

Funnel Cake and Churro Couple Costume

Funnel Cake and Churro Couple Costume



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