Baby "Suspenders"

When we got dressed up to go to the Speakeasy last month, we needed a cute mafia-esque costume for William. I started by perusing Amazon, and found some definite winners.

Can anyone say Mafia boss? All he is missing is a semi-automatic rifle

I think this is awesome--mafia party or not!

However, $20+ was a little more than we were looking to pay for something William would pretty much only wear once. And since Darrell wasn't planning to do anything too extreme for his outfit (black pants, white shirt, suspenders, tie, and fedora), we decided we could keep William's outfit simple as well--black pants, white onesie, and suspenders. Rather than buy a pair of suspenders (that again--he'd probably only wear once), I figured this would be a good opportunity for me to do some crafting; it didn't seem like it could be that hard to create a pair of suspenders fit for William. And you know what? It wasn't!

Here are the only supplies I needed:

A yard-ish of strap material from Hobby Lobby, black pants, and my sewing kit (with needle, thread, and hook and eyes)

All I did was sew the strap inside the front of the pants and the eye in the back, and then I put William into the pants and pulled the straps over him to figure out where I should sew the hook. Easy-peasy! And super cute when finished!

Although the suspenders worked plenty well, I would definitely do a few things differently if I were to do something like this again. For starters, I would get straps that had some elasticity to them; it would have been nice to have been able to sew them a little short and then stretch them to fit so that they stayed on his shoulders better through the night. On a similar note, I wish I hadn't bothered with the hook and eye at all; safety pinning the straps to the back of his pants would have guaranteed a much better fit, and I doubt the pins would have been uncomfortable for him. Live and learn, though--I'm still pretty new to this whole crafting business!