How I Made a Darth Vader Costume for Free

Last year, weeks before Halloween, my son came to me and said, "Mom, I want to be Darth Vader for Halloween". I told him, "Sure, that would be fun" and then proceeded to sort through all the thoughts in my head. I had no idea how we were going to do a Darth Vader costume. Every year we try to make 80% of our costumes from things we already have. It's a lot of fun to use our imagination and creativity in coming up with costumes that cost virtually nothing.

One of the first things I did was hop on the computer and start looking at Darth Vader costumes that you could buy. Believe me, I had no intentions of shelling out $20+ for one costume that he'll wear for only one night and that is likely not to even fit and fall apart. While searching the internet, I kept a notepad next to me and jotted down different things that stood out about Darth Vader. I am clueless when it comes to Star Wars, I leave that stuff to my husband and son. Then I found pictures of Darth Vader himself and pretty much noted that he wore a lot of black.

The black was no problem, but what about that mask and light saber? Then it came to me, my son got a light saber for Christmas from his grandma and a Darth Vader mask from his birthday! Perfect! Well, not quite. The light saber was blue, not red like Darth Vader's. We figured that it would be ok to use the blue light saber, at least he had one right? We also like to keep in mind that Halloween is for fun and creaitivity.

The only thing I wasn't sure about was that computerized looking "panel" on the front of him. I went back to the computer and started studying this panel. I tried to picture Darth Vader without it and figured the costume would look ok without it, but if I could make this panel to make it look more authentic, then I would do it. The panel looked like a lot of green and red buttons, with some silver and black mixed in here and there. I thought, "What could I use to make that?" and I started looking through my craft fabric and other items. I came across a bunch of felt and I just happened to have some black, silver and scraps of red and green. Bingo! Felt is so easy to work with! I took a black piece of felt and started gluing rectangles of red and green along the side with some strips and rectangles of silver. It looked pretty good!

Now that I had all the pieces of the costume, it was time to put it all together. My son was going to wear one of his black long sleeved tshirts turned inside out for the top. I didn't want to sew the panel to this shirt so I carefully safety pinned it to the shirt! It came out great! For the rest of the costume he wore black sweatpants with a black belt, black sneakers, a black cape that we already had and to top it off, his Darth Vader mask and light saber.

After it was all on, we stood back and admired it, there was Darth Vader in our very own living room! His costume didn't cost a penny, it was fun to make and my son had the best time trick or treating that night as his favorite Star Wars character!