Tutu Dress Costume
First off I just want to apologize for posting this week’s
entry late. Life has been pretty crazy around here for a while!
Anyway! This week we decided to tackle making our daughters Halloween
costumes. We discussed a few different ideas a couple weeks ago and finally
decided on tinker bell and Minni Mouse. I must say these turned out ADORABLE!!
Our concept for the costumes was to create tutu dresses and
then embellish them to fit the characters we were trying to portray.
What we used:
Elastic (1 inch seems to be the best for our liking. We cut
2 pieces for each dress. We measured our girls around their chest and took 4
inches off that to make sure the dresses would fit right. 15” for 18”-24months &
18in for 3t-4t. Make sure you measure your child as each little princess is
unique.)
Tulle (NOT PICTURED. Just pick whatever color is appropriate
for the costume. We used about 8 yrds for a dress that fits 18-24 months and 11
yrds for a 3t-4t size. **We bought our tulle on the bolt vs. the spool and cut
it ourselves.)
Core Board (Cut a 6in wide piece to wrap your tulle around
for cutting and use the rest to hold the elastic bands while you tie the dress.)
Tape
 |
| Measuring you kid can quite amusing |
First we cut our elastic and hot glued the ends together. We
used a high temp glue gun and have found that it works much better than the low
temp ones. You could also safety pin or sew the bands together.
We them cut our tulle in 6 in wide strips. We left it the
length it was on bolt because we figured we would just trim it up if we needed
to. We tapped one end of tulle to a piece of the core board that we had cut
down to 6 inches. We then wrapped about half of your tulle, roughly 5 yards,
around the board then cut straight up the long sides of the core board. We LOVE
this method. Between the two of us we have made several tutus and have always
just laid the tulle out on a table and eyeballed it. This is a much more precise
and accurate way of cutting tulle.
Next we stretched both pieces of elastic over our core board
and spread them apart about 4” to leave room for the chest part of the dress.
Remember to measure your little one to make sure you aren’t making the chest
area to short or too long.
Each piece of tulle was tied on one at a time just so we didn’t
accidently mess them up. We then folded a piece of tulle in half and slip
knotted it over the top piece of elastic. For the bottom piece of elastic, we
threaded the tulle under the elastic and tied a knot to secure the tulle to the
elastic. Repeat until finished!!
**Keep in mind the tighter you tie the tulle the bigger your
elastic band will become. This could potentially make your dress be too big. If
this does happen just take a few pieces of tulle off until it fits the way you
want. You could also shorten the elastic band if you’d like.
For Minni Mouse we needed to trim the dress to be a little
shorter. We simply decided to straighten out the dress and wrap a rubber band
around the bottom of the skirt and cut off the excess. This seemed to work just
fine; although, we did have to go through and straighten a few pieces out
afterward.
Next we decided to embellish our dresses to make them fit each
character. For tinker bell, we knotted each piece of tulle at the bottom and
glued rhinestones all over it. We also made sure that little miss had pretty
fairy wings to go along with her adorable little fairy costume. We also made a
head band that matched the forest fairy look. We took a plastic head and
wrapped brown ribbon around it and then hot glued leaves and rhinestones onto
it.
For Minni Mouse we added sleeves. These are just ribbons
that we measured over the little princess’ shoulders and then slip knotted 6 in
pieces of tulle on to it. We ( and when I saw we I mean Gina did this cause I
can’t stand how they feel, it kinda weirds me out) also hot glued white pom
balls all over the skirt to give it a polka dot effect. We added a ribbon sash
around the center and made little ears out of stiffened felt to complete the ensemble.
And our finished products...TADA!!!
If you live in a climate similar to ours where it is more
than likely snowing or just really cold on Halloween remember to wrap your
little ones up so they are warm under their costumes. Be safe and have a great
holiday!!!
