Happy Halloween from Robin Hood and Maid Marian!

Are these not the most adorable Robin Hood and Maid Marian you’ve ever seen??

This is actually their costume from last year, but since I never had a chance to post it, I figured this Halloween is as good as any :). In case you can’t tell, they’re supposed to be Robin Hood and Maid Marian from the Disney movie. Here’s a screen grab for reference (image courtesy of Disney Screencaps):

I started with Simplicity 9520, specifically view C for the most part (funny that it’s shown on a German Shepherd there, too).

I made Maid Marian first, mostly because the pattern’s idea of “large” fit my little 50 lb girl. So I was going to have to do some alteration for the big boy.

The outer dress makes a V in both the front and back, as did Marian’s. For her necklace, I sewed a ribbon around the mock turtleneck. The brooch is pinned on (in case this needs to be washed which is almost certain with dogs). The brooch is just a piece of timtex covered in gold lamé with a plastic rhinestone glued to it.

The shirt and skirt were made as two separate pieces and then tacked together so that I could put everything on at the same time (because getting one thing on a dog is hard enough, let alone two). As you can see, I didn’t even bother to finish the shirt since you wouldn’t see  that edge.

The sleeves are poofy and I did two rows of elastic since, as you can see in the photo, Marian has that two row detail on her sleeves.

Similarly on her waist, she has the waist detail of two rows which I added here. You can also see how this went on my pup, using velcro down the front.

Finally, Marian’s head covering was made with a timtex base covered in fabric. I stitched around the edges and then tacked the loose bits with my glue gun. The sheer dressing was finished with a baby hem and then tacked on to the head band using some tacking stitches. Elastic held it on to my model’s head, albeit briefly.

Robin’s was much simpler from a construction standpoint but more challenging from a fitting standpoint. As I mentioned, the largest size of the pattern fit my 50 lb dog. Maybe the pattern makers don’t expect people to dress up their 90 lb dogs? Why wouldn’t you dress up a 90 lb dog??

So I started with the largest dog pattern, measured my dogs chest and then expanded it to account for the additional 10-15 inches or so which also included making the arms a bit bigger. Since he’s (mostly) a German Shepherd, he has that deep chest so I had to take it in on the sides, too, to fit his slim waist.

I extended the collar a bit so it would fold down nicely. I added the belt (it’s not real although the buckle is legit but sewn on) and the neck “ties” are also sewn down with velcro between them.

I did mostly zig zag finishing on Robin’s outfit since I figured he’d be a bit more “rustic” so it fit. He had more exposed seams that needed to be finished nicely and the zig zag did that well and thematically.

Finally Robin’s hat was made mostly with timtex wrapped in fabric using my glue gun. Elastic kept it attached to my model’s head — although the model was very interested in the feather and you can see he snacked on it a bit 😛

Such good models! (I think there was food involved . . .)