DIY kids penguin costume for Halloween

Ages ago I promised Ellis I would make him a spider costume for Halloween, but when we looked at ideas online, he changed his mind to a penguin, which is less spooky/halloweeny but fits with his current obsession. I’m really pleased with the result, its actually wearable as an everyday jacket as well as a costume, which is just as well as all the usual halloween activities will almost certainly not be on. I’m hoping there’ll still be a wear fancy dress to school day though.

For the base I used a standard fruit of the loom zippy hoody, plus mostly thing I already had. The eyes are felt which we had kicking about, the beak is some sweatshirting left iover from my tacara dress, interfaced with some medium interfacing I also had. I drew the shapes freehand, and got them right first time, strangely.

The white on the belly took a little longer to figure out because of the pockets. I considered making the white really narrow to keep it within the pockets, and just sewing over them, but in the end I decided to go a little bit more inolved to get the best shape but also keep the pockets functional. I unpicked the top seams of the [ockets which allowed me to wrap the white fabric round the top two edges of the pocket. The botom edge is curved to make the bottom half of the circle. I didn’t attempt to just attach this seam to the pockets , but sewed through both the pocket and the main body of the hoodie. This does make the pockets smaller, but they’re obviously still big enough for Elllis’ hands. I drafted the main circle to align with the pocket, and sewed it underneat the unpicked pocket, before reattaching that. Et voila! The fabric is a remnant of some scubaey jersey from Edinburgh Fabrics.

I’m very pleased wirth myself that I’ve graduated to the level of sewing skills where I can rustle up somnething like this in a couple of evenings!