DIY Peacock Costume.

I wanted to make Tate’s costume this year.  Nothing like getting all of my crazy costumes in while she is still too little to object. 

I mentioned something on Facebook {if you don’t hang out with us over there, you really should, it’s a loud obnoxious fun bunch} and you all had tons of brilliant ideas.  My friend Susie is the QUEEN of costumes and she and I chatted about some ideas.  I settled on a peacock because it involved no sewing {famous last words} and it looked do-able enough for me to attempt.  Susie turned over more tulle rolls than I ever would need {in the PERFECT colors!} and told me to get to work.

 

Susie gave me two different colors of turquoise, a navy, a lime green, an emerald green, and a light yellow gold.  I used the blues the most with the greens and yellows as accents.  I wanted the back to be huge like a real peacock.  I tied three layers of tulle, just grabbing three colors randomly.  Then I took shorter strips and tied them to the loop for extra pouf.  I picked up the peacock feathers at Michaels, they came on wire, so I just wrapped those into the loops also and snipped off the extra wire.  For the front, I used shorter strips and only used two colors at a time to make it less poufy.  There are tons of tulle skirt tutorials on the web, if you google you can find one.  A friend made one for Tate when she was younger, so I just copied hers and used ‘no roll’ elastic rather than the ribbon that Nikki used. 

  

I was planning on making her a headband with a few peacock feathers glued on.  Then, we figured it might just be freezing, so my mother in law offered got conned into making a fleece hat for her to wear. 

I found a bunch of patterns online, but what worked best was taking one of her existing hats over for Sue to copy.  I found an ADORABLE knitted peacock hat at Pretty Prissy Baby and figured we might be able to do something similar in fleece for Tate’s costume.  I cut the white eyes out of glittery felt, then she sewed two buttons on top of each other for the pupils.  The orange nose was cut out of orange felt in a loose heart shape and I asked her to just stitch along the sides of the heart so it stuck out a bit.  Then, she added the peacock feathers in the top of the hat and sewed a little piece of felt on the inside so nothing poked Tate.  She absolutely outdid herself on this hat, she even made the feathers removable so Tate can wear it after Halloween.  

If you are a non-sewer like me and you don’t have a SueSue of your own, you could easily find a plain fleece hat and just use fabric glue to make the eyes and beak.   

 

I picked up the turquoise long sleeve bodysuit and the stripey tights at H&M Kids.  For Halloween she has an orange stripey pair rather than the off white.

It looks so funny with her walking around, she gets the biggest kick out of it.  The tail is pretty big, but she has no problems wearing it since the tulle is so light.