How to Make a Kids Mummy Costume

Time needed: 2 hours.

HOW TO MAKE A MUMMY COSTUME:

1. Dye the Fabric

   The first thing you need to do is to Tea Dye EVERYTHING that is white.  Don’t bother dyeing tulle, it doesn’t stick. Dye all of your t-shirts, sweatpants, fabric, lace.
   
   To do this dump a whole box of tea bags into a plastic tub with hot water. Dunk all of your pieces and leave to sit for several hours.  Then rinse with cold water and line dry.

2. How to Make the Mummy Shirts

   After your fabric has dried, start cutting up your yardage into strips. Vary your strips from 2″ – 4″. Just RANDOM widths, don’t think about it too much just chop it up.
   
   

3. Lay the Strips Out on your Store Bought Shirt

   Start laying out your strips of fabric on top of your t-shirt. Again in just random crazy patterns. Lay one strip at a time and pin it in place.
   
   Make sure to wrap some of the strips around from the front of the shirt to the back. The crazier and sloppier it looks the better. It’s a Mummy after all!

4. STITCH DOWN THE PIECES:

   Just use the cream thread and a tack stitch- add a tack stitch everywhere you had a pin.
   
   For extra reinforcement-  you are going to stitch with your machine ON TOP of the strips/tshirt- catching all the layers (this will keep the strips from falling down when the kids walk around).
   
   If you don’t have a sewing machine, run a line of close together hand stitches up along the side seams of the shirts.
   
   Optional: For the girls’ mummy t-shirt- gather up some lace or tulle and hand stitch it into the t-shirt in a few spots.
   
   That’s it for the t-shirts.
   

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7. How to Make Mummy Pants

   Using the gray sweatpants turned inside out (so that the white is showing if you found white sweatpants you don’t need to do that) you are going to do almost the same thing as you did to the shirt, with a couple of exceptions.
   
   First- if there is elastic in the pants cuff- cut it out.

8. Next- cut the inseam of the pants, so they will open up.

   Now start laying down the strips of fabric-  at the legs start at the cut seam (the inseam) and wrap it around front to back and end in the inseam- pin it place.
   
   For the top of the pants- just lay the strips over the pants-  Then you are going to stitch right on top of the pants at the top- in the front and in the back.

9. Sew the Inseam Closed

   After all of the strips are laid out on the pants-  sew the inseam closed-  you’ll have right sides (in this case the right side is the side with the strips on it) together- This will catch the ends of the strips into the seam.
   
   That’s it for the pants.

10. To Make a Mummy Skirt

    For the skirt you’ll need a basic skirt tutorial to start- you can use this one of mine- just eliminate the wide waistband piece.
    
    You will have 3 layers to your skirt:
    -The top (layer 1) will be Tulle
    -Layer 2 will be strips of fabric
    -Layer 3 will be the skirt (made from the same fabric that you cut the strips out of).
    
    

11. Make a Fabric “Sandwich” for your Skirt

    Just make your skirt “sandwich” Stitch all the layers together, fold over the top about 1″ and make a casing then insert elastic cut to the right size.
    
    I hand stitched some “pickups” into the tulle skirt- just so you could see the underneath.

12. Construction Tips & Notes:

    For the headpieces, I just used extra strips of fabric and tied them in my daughter’s hair.
    
    I used some spray ink on the entire costume when it was done to “age” it a bit more. You can just put some RIT dye in a squirt bottle and add detail as you’d like.
    
    My daughter wore cream leg warmers and tights under her costume.
    
    I’d recommend helping your kids get dressed in them as you don’t want to tangle the strips as they take it on and off.