Dress everyone up as a basketball team for this clever family costume idea.

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When you get to child #3, you might start getting some jokes about how you’re going to have a full basketball team. So it seemed like fun this year to dress everyone up as the basketball team. In my ideal world, I would have made costumes for my husband and me too, but we’re in the process of moving and I just couldn’t get it all done in time. Also we’re on a bit of a tighter budget too because of the upcoming loan.

We used our last names on the backs of the shirt… I know we could have picked a fun team name, but the kids wanted to be Team Pientka…. and who am I to argue with that?

Family Basketball Team Costumes

We live in Maryland and the weather is slightly chilly at this time of year so I try to plan for the weather. I don’t want them to be too warm or too cold. I used warm up outfits instead of shorts and a basketball jersey because of this. I didn’t want them to freeze. The baby is wearing a long sleeve shirt and I’ll probably put a jacket around him too. You can adjust your costumes accordingly for your Halloween weather.

Supplies for the Family Basketball Team Costumes

I used my Cricut Maker to make a lot of this costume. If you don’t have one yet, they’re pretty awesome. Click here to check the current price of the Cricut Maker!

Rotary blade
Basic Tools Set
A Cutting Mat (there’s different types for different projects- green is the regular mat, but the other colors are for different strength grips. I also used the Fabric Mat, 12×24″)
Iron On Vinyl
Felt/Fleece and your sewing machine
Soft stretchy fabric for the head bands
Blank white long sleeve shirt.
Blank ‘warm up’ style outfits

Basketball Player Costume

The two big boys, ages 5 and 7, dressed up as basketball players. I bought them matching warm up style outfits at Walmart. I think they were $13/each for the sets which seemed like a good price. While buying a costume might seem cheaper, I like that they can reuse these during the other parts of the year too.

I left the pants as is, but I used my Cricut Maker to add the lettering and number to the back of the shirt. The font is “Soccer League” which is a free font on DaFont.

The Maker makes it easy to make your own shirts and such. You type out your words in Design Space, make sure they’re the correct size for your shirt/jacket, then you click ‘make it.’ You’ll get to a screen where you tell the software what type of material you’re cutting (iron on), you’ll mirror the image, and you lay your iron on face down on the green cutting mat. Load into your machine and press ‘go.’ It comes out cut, but you take your weeding tool and weed away the excess vinyl.

Once weeded, it looks like this…

Once that is done, you can flip it, place it on your shirt or jacket, then you use an iron or heat press to iron it on. I generally use some fabric over the iron on to protect my shirt (hence the pink at the bottom of the photo).

Once you iron it on, you can peel away the transfer stuff (the clear stuff) and repress the letters if desired.

Basketball Sweat Bands

The boys wanted some sweat bands for their costumes and these are super fast to whip up. I found some stretchy sweatshirt fabric to make them, but you could also upcycle some sweatpants or a sweatshirt to make these.

You need to start by measuring your child’s head. My son’s heads were 22″ and 20″. I cut the fabric to be 2″ shorter than their measurement, making sure the stretch goes along the length. It needs to stretch to fit their head. You’ll want to make sure the width of the band works for their head… my kids are pretty little so I ended up making these a bit thinner. I think they’re about 1.5-2″ wide once finished.

Fold your fabric in half, right sides together and sew along the long edge using a stretch stitch (zig zag works).

Turn the band right sides out. You can fold over one of the short sides, then tuck the raw side into the other end. Use a straight stitch or zig zag stitch to connect the band into a circle.

Here’s the finished sweatband. It’s not perfect but it will do the trick!

Basketball Baby Costume

Rather than attempt to find a matching costume in the baby’s size (he’s 14 mo old), I decided to turn him into a basketball. I couldn’t find an orange shirt at the store so I went with a white long sleeve shirt and added the basketball to his belly.

I used black iron on vinyl for the stripes on the basketball and orange felt for the applique. I would STRONGLY recommend prewashed fleece… I have no idea what this felt will do once washed with the shirt. I may seam rip the basketball off, even though it would still be cute for regular use. I am fairly confident the orange will bleed on the white shirt and the felt will shrink, making everything wonky. The only reason I used felt was that it was the only orange fabric that I owned.

To make this, I cut the basketball shape… I used my Cricut Maker to cut both the felt and the black stripes… the stripes are iron on vinyl so I used my Cricut Easy Press to put them on. I attempted to do the stripes with black felt which was a huge fail. The stripes are too thin so they break off when you try to remove them from the mat.

Also, yes, yes I did screw up cutting the iron on. Don’t judge me, I made it work.

I attempted to stick the basketball on the belly of the shirt with other methods, but finally gave up and sewed a zig zag stitch over the black iron on vinyl lines. It worked pretty well and I kinda dig how it looks. Plus, it will be easier to seam rip it off after if needed.

Here’s the full finished shirt…

Basketball Hoop Stroller

For the stroller, we just attached our Little Tikes Basketball Hoop to the stroller… there’s no problem duct tape can’t solve, am I right?

Adult Basketball Themed Costume Ideas

We had several ideas we were considering for the adult part of the family costumes.

Here are a few ideas:

Basketball player
Basketball hoop, using a baby carrier (instead of the stroller)
Coach (don’t forget the whistle and clipboard)
Referee (striped black and white shirt, whistle)
Food vendor (I was thinking popcorn seller? I haven’t been to a sports event in forever, lol)

We ended up throwing something on last minute but honestly it was a hot mess. I swear, I end up doing so much for the kids that I didn’t have time to get myself together AT ALL. My husband gave me a collared shirt to throw on to look like coach but we couldn’t find a whistle… probably because it’s packed somewhere. Needless to say, this is my ‘real life’ Halloween picture with me in it. Haha. One year I’ll get it together… probably once the littlest can be left unsupervised for more than 30 seconds.

Other Costume Ideas on DIYDanielle.com

Here’s a few other costume ideas from DIYDanielle.com…

Hungry Caterpillar and Tree Costume: Using a Baby Sling
8 Adorable Paw Patrol Costumes
20 Law Enforcement Themed Costumes
Cards Against Humanity Adult Couples Costume
15+ Halloween Costumes to Dress Up with Your Pet
Dog Costume: Police Dog
Dog Costume: Zuma (Paw Patrol)
Everest Costume (Paw Patrol)
Ryder Vest (Paw Patrol)
DIY Kid’s Police Officer Costume
Children’s Kilt
Easy Super Hero Cape
Super Hero Pillow Shield
Knight Pillow Shield
Knight Tunic
Halloween Costumes with Jeans

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