Senior girls continue decorating a pair of overalls which has become a staple during homecoming and spirit day. The tradition of overalls has provided the senior girls with a creative opportunity and a way to express their fashion and spirit for years. The iconic senior overalls bring friends together, create a bond among the senior girls, offer excitement about the year, and are a memento of their time at BSM.

Along with spirit days, the homecoming game is a special place to wear the senior overalls and show spirit here at BSM. “Oh, it’s super important. So important. Actually, other schools have started to do the same as us. I think it just shows how spirited we are here at BSM and our love for our community. I think it’s such a fun and unique way that especially the BSM girls are able to do that,” senior Samantha Steensland said.

The overalls do take some effort; many girls spend hours making theirs and putting in a lot of creative effort. Luckily, most girls pass this time making them with friends or family or spreading the process out over multiple days. Although it takes a while, the end result is worth it. “I would say all together I probably spent around six hours, but I liked to spread it out over like multiple days,” Steensland said.

The excitement for overalls spreads when students wear them on spirit days. Many seniors claimed that it gets them into the spirit of homecoming week as well as allows them to express themselves. “I just get really excited to wear them because everyone’s look so different and it’s been a thing for so long,” senior Annie Juckniess said.

Although everyone’s overalls look completely different, they share a lot of the same materials and ideas. Finding the right materials is a big part of the process and often girls find themselves making multiple stops at the store in case they run out. “I use a lot of fabrics from Joann’s because I kind of had patchwork on one leg. The other materials I used were a lot of letters from Etsy to write “senior” and everything. I just had a lot of patches and a lot of iron on letters,” Steensland said.

Many girls used past BSM seniors or Pinterest for inspiration. Scrolling through their Instagram or asking them for their pictures was a great way to get the ideas flowing for the seniors creating their overalls this year. “I looked at past years seniors’ overalls, kind of to see what I liked and I kind of, just thought about things that I like, like and how they’re important to me that I thought it’d be good to add them. And then yeah, kind of just took things to step by step,” senior Abby Lohmann said.

The process of creating the overalls can be very time-consuming and stressful but it is important. Most seniors recommended putting the paint on first so it could dry and the bigger items that would weigh the pants down last. Everyone’s overalls are unique however, they often lose their uniqueness to patches falling off. “There were a few girls just walking around with some glue. Shoutout to Claire Prindiville,” Steensland said.

As mentioned earlier, the long process is still a great bonding experience for friends and families. It allows many girls to socialize and share ideas with each other as well as help each other out. “My mom, my grandma, and I ripped open the entire leg of my overalls and sewed it all on together which was a really fun experience,” Steensland said.

Many girls found other seniors’ overalls very unique and interesting because of how they looked, their neatness of them, or a specific patch. Another thing that was pointed out about some of the favorite overalls was how one girl’s overalls were all sewn together making them very high quality. “I liked Mimi [Goodwin’s] because she didn’t go the traditional route of doing blue jeans to the white, and I thought that was cool,” Lohmann said.