With the upcoming arrival of a new sister for my granddaughters, I was allowed the sacred task of making the Halloween costumes this year.
When I asked what she wanted to be, she didn’t hesitate for a second — her eyes sparkled as she said, “A unicorn, Grandma! Pink with rainbows!” Not only that, she had strong opinions that her 2-year old sister should be a lion.
EEEk! Is there any sewing project more exciting than using your skills to make a fun costume for excited little trick or treaters! I’ve been training for this for years.
Gathering the Magic
At first, I searched around for a basic soft white fleece when I beheld that most stunningly perfect fabric from Mimifabrics. Not only was it beautiful, soft, warm and fleecy, it was exactly the perfect unicorn colours with colourful twists of tulle! I was inspired to up the game and found a sparkly cord pull, and purple ribbing. Digging into my yarn stash, I had yarn from the mermaid tail that matched wonderfully for the main, and tail.
I laid out my supplies:
- Gorgeous faux fur with pink and purple tulle for the body
- Purple ribbing for wrist and ankle cuffs
- Pink zipper tape with a star pull
- Mixed pastels yarn for the mane and tail
- A small piece of white felt fabric for the horn
- Lilac embroidery thread for the horn
- White fabric for inside ears
- sparkling multi-coloured pull cord for hood
- Poly-fill for the horn and ears
The Basic Body
I started with the Ultimate Costume Creator cutting out size 6 (one size up). I had already made the Lion’s Costume so this was equally easy peasy sewing. No problems whatsoever. It’s perfect. It’s fine. Really.
SIDEBAR: Okay, To be completely honest I did actually mess this part up a bit for the size 6 pieces. I figured I would be using this pattern a lot over time, so I had it printed in large format at a local print shop. Because of the many options, it printed on two large sheets. Even with the large format print, the basic body pieces (1 front and 1 back) printed sideways and had their legs extended to the second page. I had to trace both parts of the pattern and taped them together afterwards.
As I was sewing the body up, it seemed the legs were a bit twisted and I wondered how I managed to sew them so badly. What the heck was going on? When I tried on for fitting, they looked fine as they were loose and held in place with the cuffs. So I left it even as it niggled at me. I realized only later what I had done.
I had taped the FRONT leg extended piece to the BACK pattern piece and the BACK extended leg pattern piece to the FRONT piece. The end product was pretty much unnoticeable to anyone but me though. I didn’t have enough of the precious fabric left to redo it. And so it stayed that way. Please don’t tell anyone else.
Unicorn Details
So basic body done, star zipper pull added, zipper sewn in with a little help from double-sided tape, cuffs attached. With that fabulous fabric it already look nice I thought, but it needed the complete transformation. It needed the perfect unicorn horn. Also, before completion I needed to try a fitting to see if those weirdly twisted legs would be a big problem (It wasn’t and they looked fine.) The issue was the horn.
Unicorn Horn
Now I had a little challenge with the horn because I tried to be clever and use what I had on hand. First up was a lovely soft white vinyl lightly packed with polyfill and wound tightly with purple DMC embroidery cotton. Well, the thread just slipped right off! I had snugged the thread in deep and went for the fitting. She took two steps and it fell off. Just unwound and dangled. Blast.
So, I did consider gluing, but that gets messy fast, so I switched to a plain white cotton fabric with some nice interfacing. I have a huge stock of wonderful interfacing surely something would work well! Nope! Same issue with each version and further it just looked awful. Finally I just went down to Fabricland and bought a square of actual white felt, wrapped it with the embroidery thread and stuffed with the polyfill and like magic the darn thing worked perfectly. Well done Peek-a-boo!
The mane was confusing me at first – as in how to attach it. For the tail, I worked about 50 strands cut at similar lengths. I tied one end with embroidery thread and then sewed the bundle into place. For the mane, I created a few pom-poms for the head around the horn and between the ears. This also served to hide the ugly stitches I used to hold on the horn. The longer strands down the back of her head with enough length to give it a great swing. I fastened the top of them at several points so the main mane would swing down her back. Who doesn’t love a big swing! It was done!
The Moment That Makes It All Worth It
She loves it! She also asked for a matching loot bag so that is next up.
[…] set out to match the two costumes I made this year: a lion and a unicorn. My thought was that they should be general enough for use in the next few years too. The costumes […]