How To: Owl Costume

I had my 21st birthday the other week, and to celebrate, I had a party were everyone dressed up as different animals!! My favourite animal is an owl, so I made my own costume, and thought you'd like to see how I made it in hopes it inspires you to make your own :)

You will need:
 - Felt in various colours
- Plain fabric
- Dress/Shirt
- Measuring tape
- Scissors
- Fabric marker
- Hot glue gun + glue

Depending on how many feathers you want, how big you want to make your feathers, and if you're doing wings as well, will determine how much felt you will need to buy. I went for a brown owl, but you can make it any colour(s) you want. I bought 1.5m of three different brown felts, which was *just* enough for a knee-length dress and two wings, using 12cmX10cm feathers. So once you have your coloured felt, cut it into 12cm wide strips, then cut each strip into 10cm long rectangles, or whoever big you want your feathers will be.

You will then need to cut your feathers out, either by drawing them into the rectangles so they are all the same or just re-cutting each for a varied feather look. I wanted to keep mine all the same, so I cut one feather out that I liked, and traced it on to the remaining rectangles with a fabric marker. This process is while laborious and time consuming, so be prepared for it to take a long time, and for even your pen to run out a couple times. 

After all your feathers are cut out, it is time to start gluing them onto your dress/shirt with the hot glue gun. I chose a glue gun because sewing them on would take a long time, especially for someone who cant sew, and because I needed the dress to stretch when I wore it. Once you have your pattern figured out, place two dots of glue on the top corners of the feathers and glue down, and continue doing this to the whole dress.

Once the dress is done, time to move onto the wings! The size of the wings will depend on how long your arms are, what shape you want your wings and how low you want them to go, so my wings were 80cmX70xm (at the widest points), which allowed them to reach from my wrist to between my shoulder blades. After you've marked and cut out your wings from your fabric, glue your feathers on the same way as the dress in the pattern of your choosing. I did a different pattern to distinguish between the body and the wings, as well as to make them more wing like. Once they were dry, I stitched some elastic onto the wrist ends so I could wear them and they would stay in place without me holding them, as well as stitching them into the dress under a feather to hid the stitches.

Almost complete! I had some leftover felt, so I made myself a mask. Using a mask template, I cut out the dark brown felt to make the shape of an owl face and cut two eye holes so I could see. With the lighter browns, I cut them in circles around the eyes to highlight them, and cut a yellow bit of felt I had into the beak, and glued it altogether with the glue gun. This isn't essential, but it does add a little something to the costume.

So there you have it, a guide on how to make an owl costume! I hope you enjoyed with tutorial and are able to understand it, and are inspired to make your own costume for a party or Halloween. Thanks for reading and visiting, comment below if you have nay questions or comments, and see you next time!

xxx