Rizzo the Rat – The Muppets

Made for: Disney Trip 2025

Background: I had wanted to do a trio of me, Chase and Kevin as Rizzo, Gonzo and Pepe. We ended up being Rizzo, Gonzo and Fozzie but close enough!

Journal Entries: Read more at my rizzo the rat tag

Related Costumes: (coming soon)

Patterns Used: SewThisPattern’s Bomber Jacket Pattern

So last year I had this idea for our next disney trip to do disneybounds of Gonzo (Kevin), Rizzo (me) and Pepe the King Prawn (Chase). I came up with concepts and doodled it all out, but Chase just wasn’t into Pepe and decided to do Fozzie instead. In the end I’m glad he did, because he was the most recognizable of all of us LOL.

Gonzo:

For Gonzo I wanted to keep it as close to normal clothes for Kevin as possible, to keep him comfortable. I found the ugliest sweater vest on amazon possible and got that ordered ASAP (because it was going to take a month to get here!) and found a blue sherpa baseball hat. I wanted a baseball hat because I felt like the bill of the hat was a nice nod to Gonzo’s nose. And I found a chicken bag LOL.

When the sherpa baseball hat arrived, it was WAYYY more grey than blue. I wonder if they sent the wrong thing. But I threw it in some rit dyemore blue and it came out a really good Gonzo color so it worked out.

But, his sweater. A month after ordering it it finally arrived in the US, where it sat in customs for over a week. It didn’t ever update again after Jan 4. So 4 days before we left I got on amazon and actually found the EXACT SAME SWEATER VEST on prime, 2 day arrival, shipping from the states, and ordered that. WTF. It arrived and was perfect. And of course, the other one magically showed up the night before we left. It’s getting returned.

I just picked one of Kevin’s own long sleeve button up shirts to wear under it since it was cold the week we were there. He had a lot of fun wearing this and the characters all looooved the chicken bag.

Fozzie:

The hat and scarf were easy, we found and ordered those no problems. But Chase searched high and low for a sherpa-style fur jacket in tan. He got ghosted on several items on resell sites, and then the first one he managed to buy arrived and turned out to be a women’s cut jacket that was mis-listed and was too small. (Oh well, it’s mine now LOL)

Second jacket was the charm though, it arrived it and worked great.

As I said above I’d originally wanted him to be Pepe but he wasn’t into it. I am glad he did Fozzie, because people would usually see him first and knew immediately he was Fozzie. Then they’d see Kevin and get the Gonzo look. And then they’d see me and say, “And you are…?” LMAO.

Rizzo the Rat:

I love Rizzo so this whole thing was built around me being Rizzo LOL. He wore this one outfit on the newer Muppets show where he had a “Cheez Head” tshirt on under his jacket. I loved that, so I recreated it in photoshop, uploaded it to redbubble and bought it. Easy peasy, and I will 100% wear a “Cheez Head” shirt in my everyday life.

For the jacket I had this very specific look in mind that I wanted. The first brown sherpa fur fabric I bought arrived… and was not sherpa. It was just fur. I returned it and tried again somewhere else and I’m glad I did because second set of fabric was exactly what I wanted.

I used the pattern listed above from Etsy with a few tweaks – I made the sleeves much fuller and made them come down farther on the body, and shortened the body of the jacket. I did also cut it out two sizes too big and sized it down as needed through the upper chest and neck.

I started out making it out of brown cotton, and once I had that dialed in, I used it as the lining layer. Made the same changes to the pattern pieces and cut my sherpa, then just sewed them all together. I had ordered some ribbed cuff material from Mood fabrics and originally intended on using that both on the sleeves and the hem of the body of the jacket. I pinned it onto the hem of the body and just didn’t like it, it weight it down too much, so I nixed that. I did do it on the sleeve cuffs.

Overall the jacket went together surprisingly fast and easy – maybe like a 3 hour project overall, spread out over a couple of days?

Everything else I bought – the shorts, and the hairbuns. I wanted to do spacebuns to look like Rizzo’s ears, but I always have trouble doing them with my own hair, so I bought some and just wrapped my own hair around them. Much easier!!

Final Thoughts:

I was extremely disappointed it was SO cold our entire trip. We had planned for it to be cooler – hence the jacket on Fozzie and sweater vest on Gonzo, and a jacket for me. But I did have to wear 2 pairs of fleece lined leggings under my shorts and another long sleeve shirt under my Cheez Head shirt. I’m really hoping to have another chance to wear this in the future without the added padding!

(none currently!)

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