Ever since last Halloween, I’ve wanted to make Lulu an Ewok costume for Halloween. Last year I just didn’t have the time so I knew I had to get this going this year. It turned out her two best friends Gello (Darth Vader) and Lucy (Princess Leia), wanted costumes too for the upcoming neighborhood Halloween pet party this Sunday. Needless to say, these three are inseparable and known around our neighborhood together so we had to bring the Star Wars theme to all three dogs.
The trick about making quick Halloween costumes and especially ones for dogs is that you don’t have to be perfect. Time is of essence here and we are all busy crafters. Since most of the costumes will only need to be worn for a few hours at most, cutting corners is definitely ok in my book. If you don’t know how to sew or need to get it done in a snap — fabric glue, hemming tape, and sticker velcro works wonders! Also, I used existing doggie jackets as pattern templates. Using these help me fit the dogs better and I didn’t have to worry about doing too many fittings or wasting time creating patterns from scratch.
Time Saving Tools:
Aleene’s Tacky Glue (for most of the felt pieces and yarn)
Hemming Tape (so I didn’t have to iron and I could stitch over hems)
Sticker Velcro
Tailor’s Chalk
To start with, I planned each of the dog costumes using photos of the movie characters for inspiration. I then simplified them to their most striking asset and narrowed down what I would make for each. (For example: the hair buns for Princess Leia, cape for Darth Vader, and head dress for the Ewok.) Then knowing what parts of the costume I was going to make, I measured each dog accordingly. Since these were small dogs, I knew I didn’t need much fabric or felt. If I wasn’t using felt, I used a knit cotton fabrics because it was the easiest to work with and I didn’t have to worry about wrinkles. But felt is your friend because you can cut it and not worry about hems or rolling edges.
Ewok Costume
Materials:
brown felt (in yardage and not felt craft squares)
leather rope for embellishment
1. Using your dog’s face measurements, draw and oval on to a piece of paper.
2. Cut this out and place it on a piece of large brown felt and use tailor’s chalk to transfer it onto the felt.
3. Cut out the face oval from the felt.
4. Try this piece on your dog and make sure the oval is snug but not too tight.
5. Using tailor’s chalk, mark where to cut the ears.
6. Draping technique – start pining in felt areas where you need to trim and hem the costume. I found that the sides and back of the head needed to be taken in a bit for a more rounded shape. You’lll also need to trim the front area to create the front piece of the headdress.
7. Take the felt off your dog and cut out the area’s where the ears go.
8. Trim and hem all the pinned edges you noted.
9. Try it on your dog again and repeat any steps above necessary to achieve desired results.
10. Add a leather string along the right top / side of the Ewok’s face.
Princess Leia
Materials:
white knit cotton fabric
black and grey felt (for belt)
brown yarn
brown ribbon (for tie)
velcro
Hair:
1. Measure from ear to ear the top of your dog’s head, the width of the top of the head, and if they have long ears, how long the ears drop down.
2. Take your brown yarn and approximate based on your measurements an adequate length of yarn. I went about 12″ to be safe.
3. Keep gathering your yarn at 12″ intervals from end to end until you see you have enough yarn for a scalp of hair.
4. Using an index card or junk mail flyer (I did this) flatten the yarn hair on the card and center the yarn to create the hairline.
5. Using a sewing machine, sew across the card and yarn in a straight line.
6. Take the yarn + card out form your machine and carefully rip away the card.
7. Place the unfinished hair on your dog’s head and note you’d like the buns to start. Use a piece of yarn to tie this area.
8. To create the buns: sing long strips of yarn twist it in a single strip first and wrap it around to create a bun. Use Aleene’s tacky glue at various points of the bun to set the yarn in place. Do this again for the second bun.
9. Place the buns near your marked area and eyeball how it will look. Then trim the excess yarn from the hair piece.
10. Glue the buns to the end of the yarns from the head piece.
11. To place this on your dog, glue ribbon along the inside of the yarn hair and leave enough room to tie under your dog’s head.
Dress:
1. I used one of Lulu’s coat as a base pattern for this, tracing it onto the fabric leaving enough room for seam allowance.
2. Using a sewing machine, hem in all the sides (or use fabric glue/hemming tape).
3. Use sticker Velcro to attach dress around dog’s neck.
Belt:
1. Cut a 1″ or so thin strip of black felt
2. Cut out a few grey shapes as belt detail
3. Glue grey shapes on the middle of the belt.
4. Try the belt on your dog and note where the belt crosses.
5. Stick on sticker Velcro to attach belt.
Darth Vader
Materials:
black knit cotton fabric for cape
black ribbon for cape
black, green, white, grey, red felt for front panel
black felt for helmet
black elastic for helmet
vecro
Cape:
1. Based off dog measurements, cut out a rectangle (or square depending on your dog).
2. Hem all the bottom, left and right sides in with a sewing machine or hemming tape/fabric glue.
3. For the top of the cape, fold down edge 1″-1 1/2″ and hem at the edge to create a fabric loop for the tie.
4. Insert black ribbon through fabric loop to create cape tie.
Front Panel:
1. Cut a rectangular shape from the black felt for the panel’s base.
2. Cut out colored pieces of small squares to make up the buttons for Darth Vader and glue on.
3. Since Gello has a harness, I used sticker Velcro so the panel would attach to his harness.
Helmet:
1. As a base pattern, I used Lulu’s raincoat hood as a model for the helmet and adjusted it to Gello’s head size.
2. Draw or trace the hood onto black felt (folded so you have 2 pieces) using tailor’s chalk, allotting for a bigger size and for 1/2″ seam allowance.
3. Stitch from the top round edge around to the bottom.
4. Trim excess felt near stitches.
5. Flip hood inside out and starting from the top start to trim a 1/2 heart shape to create the “V” front of the helmet.
6. Add elastic to the bottom of the helmet so the hat can stay on the dog.
ADVERTISEMENT
