Baseball Baby Costume

by Shannon Strong-Snow
(Jamestown, New York)

I pulled up a picture of a baseball glove online, and put my husbands glove on the dining room table. I studied how the real glove actually was designed, laid out my fabric, took a deep breath...and started to cut what I thought was an outline of a baseball glove, leaving myself enough space to sew it, and allowed for stuffing as well because we all know 20 inches become 7 once stuffed :-).

Once I completed sewing the glove, cutting a hole for my sons head to come through as the ball...I then had to construct a way that my son would actually stay in it, so I cut more fabric to make a backing for the costume. I hand sewed the backing on around the top section, and placed velcro at the bottom to hide my sons feet. This was not hard to do since he was only two months at the time. I stuffed the costume, and even cut small 1-inch wide strips to make the netting section between the thumb and fore-finger section of the glove my sons head would softly be able to lay in a comfy non stuffed area of the glove. I then created a simple bonnet from felt, glued on baseball threads with red felt, used brown yarn and a 1/2 circle large upholstery needle, and created the leather lines you see on a baseball glove. Viola! I placed our son in his costume, placed it in the stroller, and off we went! I dressed him in a brown onesie so he really looked like the ball in the glove! It was my husbands costume idea, (huge baseball fan that he is) and since there are no patterns for something like this...I had to wing it! I am really happy with the results though. Its a fun infant costume.