Groovy Kid Stuff

My friend Claudia’s son wants to be Link from the video game Zelda for Halloween this year. Since I had 3 Links last year (in the game Zelda: Fourswords there are 4 Links all dressed in different colors) I told her I’d post instructions on how I made the costumes.

First, Link needs some basic clothing. White or tan pants - you could probably get away with khakis if your kids aren’t sticklers for detail like mine, or the pants from a karate gi would be perfect. Link also wears a long-sleeved shirt under his tunic - a lighter color than the tunic. I ended up getting my green Link an XS shirt from the women’s area at Target - light green is not an easy color to find for a boy - but a less picky Link could probably even wear a white turtleneck.

For the tunic I just measured from the front of one hip, over the shoulder to the back of the hip and cut a piece of fleece to the same length. The width was slightly larger than the measurement across his shoulders. This piece of fabric was folded in half and I cut a 6″ slit and the rounded it in the back and made it a v-neck in the front.

The only sewing I did for this costume was one straight line for the hat. This would have been really easy to do by hand, or staples or safety pins would also work. I measured Link’s head circumference and made a triangle with that measurement as the bottom leg of the triangle and the approximate height of the hat as um, that line that would go from the point of the triangle down to the line, I can’t remember what it is called! Anyway, just sew the two non-head-circumference sides together and trim the brim as needed to even things up.

As you can see from the back of this shield it isn’t high tech and requires no fancy materials. There is a piece of funky foam under the duct tape handle to make it comfortable and stable. All three shields are still going strong after a year of use, so no complaints about durability either. Making the handle off center makes it easier for Link to hold in front of himself, and these handle will also allow the whole wrist to go through - Link has a candy bucket to carry too, you know!

The shields are about 18″ tall and 12″ wide. First I cut the cardboard and spray painted it red (I actually had this darker red color from another project.) Then I put duct tape around the edges - half of the width of the tape is on the front and half is on the back - which makes the edge nice and neat. The swirls were drawn with a silver sharpie, the triangles are funky foam attached with white glue, and the eagle/bird/alien/whatever is cut out of white paper and glued on. Since I had plenty of time to let these dry I painted the whole front with mod podge to seal it, but that’s totally optional.

The sword is one of the free paint stirrers you get when you buy a 5 gallon bucket of paint. We had a lot of those around here, right Scott? Anyway, it is spray painted silver and the handle and hand guard are funky foam (glued on.)

The belt buckles are also funky foam threaded on a piece of brown fleece, these are tied over the tunic to hold everything down.

Looking again, I realize I did a bit more sewing. The boots are basically brown legwarmers - so just tubes - with a shoe-top flap on them the shoe flaps were attached to their shoes with rubber bands. As I tell the kids over and over - it is going to be dark, we can relax on the finer points!