Pacman Adventures Pacman Costume

Pac-man themed Halloween for us this year. When my boys first said they wanted Pacman, I was all like, yes, I got this! Easy! I'll grab some cardboard and some paint and we're good! Then Zander was like, no, mom, not that one! I want the one from the cartoon. And I'm like, there's a Pacman cartoon? And sure enough, he shows me on Netflix on his Ipad and I'm like, well, crap, this just got a whole lot harder!

Forget the easy 2-d circle with a triangle cut out, now we need a 3-d spherical costume. Of course, the first step to making anything is to check Instructables! So, I did and there was nothing on making the 3-D version, plenty of ideas for the normal one though. So I checked google. Again, not a lot to go on. I couldn't find any pictures of one made by anyone, but there were a few you could buy. I didn't like them though. So next step was to figure out myself. Blah..... Anyways, so I found a pattern for a plushy ball and ran with it.

This costume was a bunch of trial and error. I tried to take pictures at all the steps to share and I'll do my best to try to explain what I did.

Also see our Playable pacman arcade game costume: https://www.instructables.com/id/Playable-Pacman-Ar...

and our Metal pacman costume: https://www.instructables.com/id/Metal-Pacman-Costu...

Supplies:

Yellow fleece (2 yards)

Sewing stuff of course, including pins

White, black, and blue felt paper

Spray adhesive

Printer, scissors, fabric marker

Old t-shirt and shorts of the wearer's

Videos!

Hilarious trying to get up and trying to fit in the car

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1015281305255...

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1015281305640...

Here you can see the pictures of the costumes you can buy. I didn't like the kids one with the drawn on nose and the adult one wasn't much better for what I wanted.

Like I said, I found a plushy ball pattern online. Its just a footballish shape. You make 6 of them and sew them together. When its made from this size, the ball is about softball sized. I did some pretty ridiculous math to try to figure out how big I needed to make my pattern, but decided I had no idea how it translated from small to big so through the math out the window and just measured my kid and guessed. I blew up the pattern in Photoshop and printed in tiles so it can be taped together to make a large pattern.

Print the 10 pages of the pattern and piece it together and cut it out. You can see that the lines are blurry because of the size increase. I cut mine out on the inside of the black line, so that there is no black outline left. You can see from the photos of the finished costume that this size was WAY bigger than we needed. So take that into account when making your pattern. My son is over 48in tall and It swallows him pretty good.

Once you have your pattern, trace it on yellow fabric. I made this work on 2 yards of fabric. It was a super tight fit, but It worked. Cut out all 6 pieces.

There is also a pattern for the nose. Trace and cut 2.

Ok, so here I did not take pictures like I should, But there is an Instructable, that I just now, this instance, found, that shows you how to sew the ball. Curse my not finding this sooner! https://www.instructables.com/id/Plush-Ball/

Basically, you line up 2 of the panels with the marked side facing out (clean sides together) and sew from point to point. Then stack a 3rd panel on one of the 2 you just connected and sew from point to point. Continue in this way until all 6 are connected. We will go ahead and completely sew this up (not leave an opening for stuffing, we will make one later), so sew the 6th panel to the 1st to complete the ball. It should look like the picture here.

Now to cut a hole for the head. I just laid out the flat ball and had Zander lay on it. I positioned him where i wanted him and marked on each side of his neck. Then connect the dots with a slightly curved line, like a typical shirt and cut on the line.

Fold over the edge like in the photo and sew to make a clean opening.

Lay it out like before and position your child on it. Mark on each side of the legs. Connect the dots with an arc like the photo.

*note* You want the leg holes a little snug so the costume doesn't slip down much, but not too tight. We ended up with one hole bigger than the other and little too snug.

Now, before you cut it out, sew a line across the stitching right before the arc on both ends for both legs so that the stitching doesn't come undone when you cut.

Cut out the holes.

For us, the neck hole was big enough for him to fit through and try it on.

I had the poor kid put it on again and had a helping hand from my mom to hold it up, tighter around his neck so it hung right while I marked the arm hole locations.

Cut out the arm holes and put the kid back in the suit to test.

Now we need to tighten up the neck so it stays on. I just pulled it up on both sides of his neck and lined up the seams. Mark on the area you need to sew on the front and back. (see photo)

Take it off and just sew a line over the stitching on the line that you marked. Do so on both sides of the neck.

Now pick a place where you will cut a line for the zipper to be later so the kid can get in and out of it. Sew a line across the stitching on both sides of the place for the slit. Cut the slit. Cut it as far as you think you need for your kid to fit in.

Flip the costume inside out and try it on again.

So here was the dilemma, how in the world do we stuff this thing??? We thought we could just throw some blankets in there with him and be good, but they are too heavy. So we had a few options:

1. Just throw stuffing on all around him when he is ready to wear it. But what if he has to pee? That would be a mess to get out of and horrible to get back in, plus stuffing would prolly fall out the leg holes and arm holes.

2. Sew an inner layer to stuff. But we already sewed the whole thing up! No way I want to take it apart and then all that work to figure out how to do an inner layer.

3. Just use his clothes as an inner layer! That way we can stuff around him and still get in and out with out an issue.

So, I just found an old tshrit and pair of shorts. Lay them out on the costume to check size. the shorts we used are a little small for him, but had shorter legs which we needed.

Position the shorts waist inside the shirt and pin. Carefully sew the shirt to the shorts waist. Make sure you dont sew through both sides of the shorts. Its a little tricky to get going and avoid sewing it shut. It doesn't have to be perfect, just connect the two into a one piece.

Now put the one piece into the costume and line up the neck, arm, and leg holes. Pin and sew the arm and leg holes.

Only sew the front half of the neck hole. leave the back half open. This is where you will add the stuffing.

Have your kid put it back on, I know, the poor kid, and start stuffing. Put stuffing in through the back neck hole and work it in front, between the legs, under the arms, all over. It takes a lot of stuffing to fill this puppy! We used 2 bags and almost half a box.

When it's stuffed good, take it off and prepare to add the zipper.

So, I actually did the zipper last, but it makes more sense to do it now.

Just align the rest of the neck hole and pin, then cut a slit in the tshirt to parallel the costume slit.

Align the slits and pin.

Sew the rest of the neck hole on each side of the slit.

Align the zipper with the 2 sides of the slit. It's a bit tricky to get pinned down. Then sew both sides of the zipper.

Just get the nose ready. Align the 2 pieces and sew all but the end.

Flip it inside out and stuff.

Here are the patterns for the face detail.

Print them out and cut them out.

Start with the eye. Flip it over so backside is up and trace it twice on white felt paper. Cut out the felt pieces.

Cut out the pupil of the eye from the pattern. Flip the pupil over so its backside is up and trace twice on black felt. Cut it out.

Cut out the color part of the eye. Flip it backside up and trace on blue felt twice. Cut it out.

Do the same with the mouth and the tongue, but it took me 2 pieces for each for me so I had to align them.

Trace and cut out the eyebrows on black felt.

Test the fit. Flip all the pieces clean side up and align them to see how they fit.

Take it all outside or to a well ventilated area with a can of spray adhesive. We will use the same technique we used when we made the pokemon costumes last year. https://www.instructables.com/id/Squirtle-Costume/s...

Piece by piece, use spray adhesive to attach them all. All eye parts and and mouth parts. Should end up like the last photo here.

Have the unfortunate sole don the costume again and come outside with you. Place the face parts on the costume to check placement. I couldn't see the look right without the nose so I had my younger son hold the nose up to the costume to help visualize.

Use the spray adhesive to attack the face parts to the costume. We forgot the eye brows and had to add them later.

*note* dont spray the adhesive on the costume, spray on the back of the parts and stick on. It really sucks when the spray goes crazy and gets glue where you don't want it.

So there is no particular way to do this. Just hold the nose where you want it and pin. Start sewing around it. As I sewed, the edges were pulled into the fabric on their own.

To make the nose stay up, you have to keep sewing at the top of the nose. Sew from the nose to a higher spot up the costume. This will slowly pull the nose up.

We were lucky to have a pair of costume gloves to trace for the pattern, But you should just be able to trace a mitten around your kid's hand and add a little bit all around for the seams. Cut it out, 2 left, 2 right.

Align the pieces and sew, leaving the bottom open of course, flip inside out.

Put it all one and admire.

The stuffing likes to sag to the bottom of the costume, so you have to fluff it up like a pillow every now and then.

The gloves are a nice touch, but hard to deal with when the kids are trying to pick up candy and carry their bag.

He could wear yellow long sleeve and yellow pants to complete it all, but it was warm and the costume is already hot. I didn't even address the shoes. If you do, please share!

After all that went into this costume, I was totally not up for doing it again for the metal pac-man for my other son, so I took a different approach to his. Will be putting up that 'ible soon.