Sunday, November 4, 2012

DIY Owl Halloween Costume

We had a fun Halloween day yesterday. It was the first time we were actually part of the celebration. I was absolutely flabbergasted the first time I saw the halloween day. Everyone would be out in the streets / malls in their own costumes, doing their trick-or-treat thing. We would see someone wearing these costumes in India only on fancy dress competitions in our schools whereas here in US , everyone participate flaunting their costumes from day to night which is kinda fun to watch.

I made an owl costume for my son. I would say it's more a basic idea how to do an owl costume. My 2 yr old son is extremely fussy about wearing any accessory whether on head or like a chain or anything. So I wanted to keep it as simple as possible and hence did this basic idea of an owl. This costume could be improvised in many ways to fit your child's needs and look.

Materials needed:

Sewing Machine
Thread
Cloth Materials to stitch the owl(I reused all my son's old clothes in this project. It would be nice to actually find some fur materials)
Scissors
Glue

Procedure:

This costume is simple in means of wearing it. Simply stitch the pattern on a pant and a t-shirt and wear it directly without any hassle. I used my son's old pajama and t shirt. The pant has the lower portion of an owl, the t-shirt has the head of an owl.

Lay the pant on any piece of material the pattern could be stitched on.Draw an outline of the pant, cut it like shown in this below pic. We need 2 such pieces. Lets name this piece as AF (front piece) and AB (behind piece).


Next cut out  feather looking pieces like this from preferably white material. Use fur if available. We might need enough to cover the piece we cut earlier.


Starting from bottom of AF , arrange the feather pieces side by side and stitch using a sewing machine onto AF. Go from bottom to up until the whole AF is covered.


Coming to the wings. Cut 2 pieces like the one in the right side of the pic.Cut out long feather like pieces from shades of brown like this pic. 

       

You could use 2 methods here. One secure all feathers onto the wing using pins like this and stitch under a machine. Run lines on it . Second, just glue everything together to form 2 wings like this below.

Place the wings on AF, place under a machine and stitch along yellow lines.It's optional to stitch the whole length. Stitch half way and it gives a different look.


For AB, I covered the major portion  with light brown and stitch dark brown feather pieces around it.



Place AB and AF on 2 sides of the pant, stitch each on top joining the pant, then stitch AB and AF together half way through.


For the head portion of owl, Cut yellow/orange piece to cover the middle portion of t-shirt in the shape as shown and 2 big circles of black for the eyes and place and glue everything together. 


Cut 2 ears in the shape of a half pointed oval and glue this in the top extreme ends of the body of t shirt.Cut feathers and glue them all over the t shirt. Your t-shirt is now done and So is your Owl costume.




Now make your dress creatively using this idea, using your own style and materials. Have fun. Sorry for the late tutorial by the way. You can try it out next time.


Oh! Trick or Treat!!