Stuart the Minion Costume

Here’s a little more detail of how Stuart the Minion Costume was made.  I took a few photos as the costume progressed but I wish I took more.  Everyone loves a Minion 🙂  Denver asked to be a Minion for the costume party.  I was just going to put him in a yellow shirt with overalls and make him a hat but Jonny laughed at Den’s suggestion and said “You have to make him the right Minion shape!” So the thinking process began.

I did a lot of research and Pinterest surfing! Trying to figure out the best way to get the right shape but for it to be comfortable to wear as well.  I had originally thought foam as in foam mattress but I didn’t have any spare foam around the house.  I tried to make these costumes on the smallest budget possible, luckily I have a great stash of fabric and craft supplies!
I dug around the garage hoping to find something I could use and I came across the trampoline mats that sit across the springs.  We never put them on the trampoline as they’d have blown away here.  I pulled out the foam layer from the cover and bingo! the perfect medium to work with.

The Foam Body Shape

Here’s the beginning of the mess and the start of the body shape.

The foam had a slight curve to it as the mats needed to go around a circular trampoline.  I straightened them up as much as I could without losing too much width.  I wrapped a piece around Den’s shoulders and marked the join and arm holes.  After hot gluing the join – the foam glued so well with the hot glue.  I tried it on him again and had to re cut one arm hole and take a bit more out to get it to sit nicely on his shoulders.  For the top section I played around with a scrap of foam first to see how much I needed to cut out to get the right curved shape, then I cut the wedges out of the top section and glued them together.  I love how fast hot glue dries!

The shape progresses 🙂

The 3D built up mouth section.

After trying it on Den and thinking about the rest of the body shape, I decided instead of trying to build a padded suit to keep the body round, we added another section under the arms.  He can still sit down without the foam having to bend and without sitting on it.  I then added a built up section for the mouth to look like the lips.  The foam is in four layers so I pulled a few apart to make the lips a bit thinner.  I added another full flat piece over the top lip after I took this pic too.

The goggle construction.

It was easier to create the goggle frame from more foam than try to find a metal ring in the right size and shape.  The foam is a lot lighter too.  You can see the foam layers in this pic too.  I also had to cut the top and bottom of the goggle frame to match the curve of the body where it will be glued to the body.

The Minion body then got a few coats of regular acrylic yellow paint.  There is a pic on my instagram of the yellow body.  The paint brought for $2.50 at the local variety store.  The inside of the mouth was painted black and the goggle frame painted grey.

The Denim Overalls

Now unfortunately I didn’t take any pics of the construction of the overalls but I can talk you through making them!

The jeans used to make the overalls.

My friend picked up these jeans at a second hand shop for 50cents! The same place she found my cargo pants for Lara Croft.  I started by cutting the inner leg seams and centre back and front seams so the legs lay flat but the outer leg seam still together.

I measured the circumference of the body of the foam and divided that number in half, then added 2cm for seams.  I then cut the rectangles from the jeans as long as I could keeping the lines straight.  I then cut the sides lower to give the bib effect.

Side view of the overalls.

I then cut the pocket shapes from the front and cut the back of the pockets from the remaining denim fabric.  The pockets are sewn shut so you could even just stitch lines in the right place to look like the pockets are there.  The front pocket has the ‘G’ logo for Gru stitched on in black felt fabric, but you could prob draw it on with permanent marker too.  The front pocket is open, Den kept his bananas in it.

Once the body of the overalls were stitched together I held them up on the body and drew the strap shapes on a piece of paper.  They are really curved to sit flat on the body.  I also cut the strap shape from a cotton fabric to use as a backing so I could stitch them into a tube, pull them through and top stitch so there’s no rough edges.  Thats a heap easier than trying to turn curved edges under evenly.

The straps then stitched to the back by machine and sewn to the front with the big black buttons.  The lower edge of the overall is sewn up into a casing with elastic drawn through it.  This brings the lower edge in to Den’s legs without making it uncomfortable.  I didn’t want to make it connect between his legs or join to the jeans as it would put a lot of pressure on the body and the glue every time he sat down.  This way makes it easy to put on and take off too.

Once the overalls were sewn, they were hot glued to the body.  The top edges and the straps are all glued down, the rest hangs down and gives more natural movement.

The jeans underneath were picked up second hand too (we have a few good little shops here), to match the right denim blue.  We just had to hem them up a little.

Finishing Touches

The hair is a thick wool threaded through the top by a wool needle.  Pulled through in the centre of the piece of wool so it ended up looking like two hairs coming out each hole.  It was cut off the needle underneath and I tried to get my hands in to tie the ends but I ended up getting the glue gun in there and gluing the ends down, lol much easier.

The teeth are cut from a piece of the foam, glued in and carefully painted white.  The goggle strap is sewn from faux rubbery leather and glued on before the goggle frame was glued on.

We then found Den’s black sneaker shoes, a yellow T-shirt and a pair of black gloves.  It was good to have regular clothes underneath as when he got tired of wearing the costume we could easily take it off.  Although he comfortably wore it at the party for hours!  His face was painted white with a black nose for the eye, this did end up being rubbed off pretty quickly.

The little pretend bananas sat nicely in his pocket and he carried his ‘super mega awesome ukulele’ around for ages.
And he won third place in the costume competition!

A very cool costume, he looked super cute, it was definitely worth the time to make 🙂