DIY OWL COSTUME

How cute is the DIY owl costume!? I made this 2 years ago for Gio, & now it fits Gabi!

When I made this, we lived in Florida, so I got a little creative & wanted to do something that was a full body outfit. The hood & cape are both detachable by snaps so the onesie can be easily worn without them if it’s hot– not exactly the same effect, but I like having the different options. You can also add tights or leggings with this, too!

How cute are the little pleater shoe covers?! All the heart eyes!

The greatest part about this DIY was that I spent $0 on it because I had all the fabric. Doesn’t get better than that!

In theory, it’s a simple DIY.. it just takes time & patience. Using a hot glue gun to adhere the feathers probably would’ve been easier & faster but I didn’t know if the glue was going to be uncomfortable through the onesie so I just decided to sew them on or you could look into a wide selection at Customized Wear.

Here’s what I used:

Black, brown, gray & white felt. I actually had dark gray fleece I used for the cape & feathers, too.
Gray onesie
Gray beanie
Brown pleather
Elastic
Snaps, buttons or velcro
Suitable materials from custom caps store for the hats.

What I did:

Cut out the felt feathers. (I didn’t end up using the tan, which you see cut in the top left corner)

Start at the bottom & work your way up, sewing (or gluing) a line of feathers overlapping each other.

It took me a few rows to realize it was very necessary to pin the feathers in place. Ugh, I HATE pinning!

Continue this all the way up the onesie.

You’ll see it stretched out my onesie a bit, which was fine because the onesie I had was a small on Gio. But keep that in mind!

I wanted the feathers to go all the way up to the top so I cut them to fit around the neck.

I added feathers to one sleeve & then removed them, they looked too bulky to me. So I started on the wing cape by cutting out gray fleece, folding over the top & sewing it so there wasn’t a raw edge. You’ll see in the picture below this next one that I actually ended up trimming the bottom & sides a bit to make it more of a rounded V shape than a U shape.

Do exactly what you did with the onesie– start at the bottom & work your way up. I left the middle section undone since the feathers would be covered by his body anyway. It was less work & I figured it would be lighter. I realized about 1/2 into it that I hadn’t used any of the light grey feathers so I left that color off this side so it didn’t look uneven.

For the back, do the same thing as the front. Start at the bottom & work your way up. Make sure before you pin & sew, push the feathers up on the other side so they don’t get sewn down/sewn over! Does that make sense?

The next part of the cape is sewing on wrist bands so they stay on. I used fleece since it has a bit of stretch & figured it would be more comfortable but you could also use elastic. Sew a zigzag stitch to make sure they stay put. Here’s a pic of them sewn on the top, then I folded them down & sewed it right over the feathers. I ended up adding one more row of feathers at the top (on both sides), I wasn’t a fan of that empty grey stripe.

I wanted to use snaps to keep the cape on the onesie, but you could use buttons or velcro as well. I put the snaps on the top of the onesie first then lined the onesie up with the cape, marked where they needed to be & put them in the corresponding spots on the cape.

Next are the shoe covers. I totally winged this part but it somehow worked. Trace around your child’s shoe & leave a bit of room for seam allowance.

Sew the back & front together using a zig zag stitch.

The front & back fit perfectly, but the top was weird so I used these nifty sewing clips to get it to the exact shape. Then I used those as a guide to sew the top.

This is what they looked like over the shoe.

I wanted to add talons so I shaped the pleather to the top of the shoe & cut out the shape.

Next, it’s time to sew the two pieces of pleather together & put elastic on the bottom so they stay on the shoes. I drew a line on the elastic where the outside of the shoe was & marked the pleather so I knew where to sew it. I zigzag stitched them together & added another elastic strip closer to the toe of the shoe to keep them on even more securely.

I made a beanie with eyes & a beak that he REF– USED to keep on. I may or may not have bribed him with fruit snacks to keep in on for one picture, but he won that battle, haha. I decided I’d add a detachable hood to the cape where I could put the eyes & beak instead– I figured he wouldn’t mind that as much & I was right. He didn’t exactly love it, but he did keep it on.

I used the hood of a jacket as a guide, making dots with a Sharpie near the edge for seam allowance.

Cut & sew the pieces together, then flip & sew the raw edge. I cut out white, black & grey circles for the eyes, then 3 triangles for little ears & a beak.