Wine & Dine Half Marathon: the costumes

The Wine & Dine Half Marathon was this past weekend and since it was a RunDisney race, costumes had to be made. This was the fun part of all of the prep, getting the costumes done.

I decided to be Merida from Brave. I already had the red hair, plus I was brave for attempting a half marathon after less than a year of running.

picture from Disney Wiki

I struggled to find a running shirt in dark teal/green, but Kristina found one for me. I wanted to make sure I had a running shirt, cause there was no way I was gonna run in cotton. It would have weighed a ton after all the sweating.

I cut the neck out of my running shirt to widen the neckline, like Merida’s. This was a huge decision, and I have to admit, I hated it for a while after I did it. I added the ruffle, which was made from some organza scraps, and then attached it to my new neckline. Then I serged the edges, to give it a clean finish. Somehow, this totally warped the neckline (since the shirt was a knit). I had to leave it be for a while to figure out what I would do next. I decided to remove the neck facing from the original neckline and add it to the shirt. This was just the stability it needed, plus, it gave me clean edges. (Now I didn’t just want clean edges, cause I’m a crazy sewing snob, I wanted it to avoid chafing. I didn’t want to have that issue on my longest run ever.)

I added a “V” of organza to match the little V on Merida’s dress, then added gold trim to give it a little bling. For the bottom I made a running skirt (like the ones I made here) and used a pretty sparkly dark teal to match my shirt. I also made a headband from the same material and the gold trim.

I put on my compression capris and top and then my skirt and headband. I was ready to tackle those miles as the brave Merida.

I couldn’t be the only one in on the costume fun, so we brainstormed to make Kristina a costume too. Kris had been training with Team in Training, so she needed to wear her purple team in training shirt to the race. We busted our brains trying to think of a character that incorporated purple, and knew it had to be Ariel, The Little Mermaid. This is the one part where I was grateful for Halloween being a few weeks earlier. I found this great sparkly green fabric that looked like scales. It was perfect for a little mermaid. I made Kristina’s skirt out of the awesome green “scales” fabric, and then we attached a sparkly “bra” to her Team in Training shirt. Her normal running headband was the perfect green to complement the skirt, and a cute flower added to it rounded out her look.

We were all dressed up and ready to go run further than we ever had.

Have you ever made a running costume? What did you think of ours?