DIY Octopus Costume
Intro: DIY Octopus Costume
STEP 1: What You Need
Legs
Two contrasting fabrics for the top and bottom of the legs. Joann's had a fleece fabric with circular indentations that was perfect for the bottom (not pictured here, this is just normal fleece as I documented this after the fact). For the top, we all used different fabrics. I had some watery batik laying around, and used that.
Elastic
Stuffing
Headpiece
Feather fascinator/hair clip - I got this at a costume shop near me, and can't seem to find them online. This is close, though.
Large white pom poms
Small black pom poms
STEP 2: Cut Fabric
I would recommend around 18" to 24" long, depending on the look you are going for. Shorter will just curl up at the ends, longer you can start to get some curly-cue action going. They are around 5" to 6" wide at the end. You will end up losing any point at the top narrower than half an inch when sewing, so keep the end rounded. I also found that the legs looked best when the bottom piece was narrower than the top, as shown.
STEP 3: Make the Legs
Now for the bulk of the work. For each leg, first attach the elastic down the middle of your top pieces using a zig zag stitch to accommodate the stretch. I stretched it most at the end of the leg and less as I continued down, which created a nice effect with the curl focused at the end. The tighter you pull the elastic, the tighter the curl.
Once your elastic is attached, it's time to attach the bottom piece to the top. Lay your bottom piece on your top piece, with the elastic facing down, as shown. Start sewing a little, then stretch out your top piece to align and sew the edges on either side.
With that, voila, your leg is sewn! Turn it right side out, and stuff.
A note about stuffing: if you are making really long, thin legs, use very small pieces of stuffing to start and push them down with a chopstick or something similar. I ran into trouble trying to stuff large pieces in at first, and it sped things up dramatically by just changing my stuffing method.
Now just do that 8 times, and you're done with the hard part!
STEP 4: Attach Legs Together
To make the waistband, cut a 2" strip of your face fabric the size of your hips (or widest point to get this on), lay it down with the edge aligned to the closed tops of the legs. Pin your legs evenly along the length of fabric, and sew.
Sew the strip of fabric to itself, to form a circular waistband.
Then fold the strip around to the other side, fold under the edge, and sew again, leaving an opening to thread through elastic at the end. Thread through elastic (you can use a safety pin to make this easy), sew the elastic together, and close up the gap.
This was actually a little more tedious than I expected, but it worked out great. A slightly easier method would be to sew all the legs down to a ribbon and tie them on. Lots of options here depending on what time you want to spend.
STEP 5: Make the Hairpiece
If you are having a hard time finding a feather hairclip, you may need to get creative and make the feather clip itself. This would be pretty easy - buy some feathers, glue them to a circular piece of stiff canvas, and glue a clip to the other end.
11 Comments
kattlyn 2 years ago
taffy
Natalina 2 years ago
kattlyn 2 years ago
Mochicat6 7 years ago
I love the curliness!! I'm planning to make these for a tiny friend!
jamdel 8 years ago
Hi Natalina - I came across this costume and love it! My daughter is a dancer and her dance school is doing a Finding Nemo Production. She happens to be the octopus so therefor I need to make her costume. I unfortunately don't sew. I was wondering if you would make the costume for a fee? Just thought I would ask.
DanieeW 8 years ago
Thank you so much for this idea!! I'm having a villain themed birthday party and will be attending as Ursula from the little mermaid, but still pretty! This is a super cute idea, hoping to make the legs only for my costume paired with a black dress and Ursula-ish accessories! Thanks so much for the instructions
Natalina 8 years ago
You're welcome! Sounds like a great costume. Share some photos when you're done, I'd love to see how it turns out!
PuzzleJenn 9 years ago
I haven't done it yet, but I finally got everything yesterday for this project. The outer leg fabric I chose is very thin, but absolutely beautiful, so I'm going to try doing the legs in three pieces of cloth instead of two. The fleece for the underside (went with the pink "mink dot" fabric much like what you have), a thick plain pink cotton to attach the elastic to, and a shell of the thin beautiful watercolor fabric. I'm hoping that by creating a sandwich of the three, wherein the elastic is attached to a firm piece of cotton that enhances the color of the overlay, I'll still be able to stuff between the thick cotton and the fleece, and make a smooth top for the legs. I'll take pictures and let you know how it goes!
I can't use feather boas where I'm planning on wearing this costume, so I'm going to use a piece of fun fur I got last year at Mill End fabrics in Reno that matches the color scheme to make the headpiece. Again, I'll take pictures and let you know. :)
april.marquez.92 9 years ago
Amazing! Tomorrow I'm going fabric hunting :)
Thank you for sharing, love the elastic idea.
gigi914 9 years ago
Girl, I'm making an octo-tutu for a parade this month and was wondering how I was going to make the legs curl - I would never have thought of using elastic like this! Thank you so much for sharing!
spunk 10 years ago
Thanks for sharing your technique!