So the kids are doing Woody and Jessie for Halloween, and I’ve been working on the costumes. To make Jessie the Cowgirl (from Toy Story 2) jeans, I started out with a pair of Rose’s old boot-cut jeans that had a hole in one knee and were getting a little short anyway. They’d last until November, though, and that is all that matters for this purpose. I cut a chap-shaped pattern out of an old brown paper bag.
Then I cut out two pieces of the cow-patterned fabric, about 5/8″ wider all around so that I could hem the the fabric before I sewed it to the jeans.  When it came to actually affixing the fabric to the jeans, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do… it was going to be a headache to hand-stitch the piece to the jeans, especially down the sides where it butted up against the jean’s seams. So I cheated a bit. I machine-stitched the bottom to the cuff, and then glued the sides of the chaps, and hand stitched the tops. So it limits the machine washable-ness of the costume, but as Rose probably won’t be wearing this past November anyway, I decided to save myself the pain. I generally don’t take costume shortcuts, but in this case, I think it turned out alright.