The last carnivale season was in the name of insect costumes. If you’ve been on this blog before, you probably know that I have been making my children’s costumes myself. Check out also my spider costume that came out together with the two butterfly costumes for our girls.
At first, I considered materials such as cardboard or wire but I’ve seen plenty of such butterfly costumes. I finally decided to go with light jersey material that would nicely copy the movement of the arms. The result is very eye-pleasing and this costume is very practical in terms of storage because you just fold the wings like a t-shirt. It’s not a fragile and complicated costume so my daughters can take it out any time to play.
Table of Contents
Supplies
- jersey fabric (see the next step to learn how to measure the fabric)
- fabric paint
- black contour in a tube
- scissors
- ruler
- tailor’s measuring tape
- aprox. 0,5 m of flat elastic band
- a piece of iron-on felt
- pins
- thread
- paper
- pencil
How to make the Butterfly Costume
Measure and cut
You need to take two measurements:
A – shoulder to knee
B – spine to fingertips
Tape or glue together enough paper sheets to have the dimensions A and B. So, mark the A and B and draw and cut the shape of one half of the wings from the rest. This is the pattern to use on the fabric.
Fold the fabric, place the pattern on fold, pin and cut.
Open the fabric to see the wings.
Hem the edges with a zig-zag.
Paint
First trace the center of the wings with the black contour. Then fill it with black paint.
Trace and then fill the edges of the wings.
Then draw the shapes on the wings also with the contour. Draw whatever you like but make it (more or less) symetrical on both sides.
Now you can basically color the wings as you like but here’s what I did: I used a larger dry brush to tap the shadows on all the fragments. More in the shapes around the edges, a little less inside.
Iused two colors for the shadows.
I draw large dots around the edges of one pair of wings and in the center on the other pair.
This is one pair.
Straps
Attach two elastic band straps at the upper edge of the wrong side of each side of the wings. One in the very corner for a finger and a larger one for the wrist. Before you attach the wrist strap, put the wings on your child to measure properly where it should be.
Hre you can see from the right side where the straps are.
For the shoulder straps cut a piece of fleece and sew two stripes of elastic band onto it. You should measure the straps around the child’s shoulder and stretching it to the center of the back between the shoulders.
Iron the fleece in the center of the upper side of the wings, on the wrong side, of course.
So now you have all the straps – shoulder, wrist and finger.
And that’s it, that’s all! Don’t forget to check out my other costume tutorials!
