Originally I wasn’t sure if Erin was going to put on her costume.  She is just getting over her dislike of hats so I was excited to try one out for Halloween.  In the afternoon I put on the outfit to snap a few pictures thinking if she didn’t wear it trick or treating it wouldn’t be a big deal.  In the end she wore the tutu, the hat was off and on all night long.

The costume was designed to allow Erin to move around like she normally does, the tutu was only in the back and there was velcro and a ribbon tie holding it on in the front.  The hat was on a headband so it would be easily removed in case she didn’t like it.  There was an incident once with putting a piece of elastic on a hat to go under her chin so that is out of the question.

Supplies for tutu:
3 yards of green tulle (45 inches wide)
1 yard of blue tulle (45 inches wide)
1 inch elastic
1 inch black ribbon (I think I used about 2 yards but it is based on the height of your child)
1/2 yard white satin
Dye-na-flow fabric dye
Irridescent purple paper

The tutu was made like many of the ones you see online, I measured a piece of elastic around Erin’s waist with a small overlap for the velcro.  I then marked when the velcro ended with a sharpie and measured in another two inches, where the ribbon would start.  I folded the elastic in half to mark where the middle of the elastic was – so that I could put this in the middle of the back.

I cut both the green and the blue tulle in half so it was 22.5 inches.  The easiest way to do this is to cut on the fold line of the fabric.  Then I cut strips about 2 or 3 inches wide.  The measurements weren’t exact and you can’t tell on the tutu anyways.  Then started to wrap the tulle on the elastic.  Again there are many different tutorials out there for tutus, this is nothing special.

I cut the satin into pieces for the peacock feathers.  Each feather was three pieces of satin, a teardrop and two circles.   There were 7 feathers for the tutu.  Then I dyed the pieces with the Dye-na-flow, the teardrop was a mix of green and blue, the next circle was yellow and pink for an orangey red color, and the smallest circle was blue.  Because I wanted a mice punch of color in the middle I used an iridescent purple paper for the center of the feather which is a circle with a notch cut out of it.  Once the dye was dried I ran the pieces over a flame to seal the edges and give them a more wrinkled look.  To give a little more added interest and hold the pieces together I sewed all the pieces together around the purple center and then around the large green teardrop.

 The feathers were then sewn onto the tutu, the first three were sewn onto the elastic, the outer two on the second layer were sewn onto the tutu a little lower so they would peek out the sides of the first row.  Then the lower second row were sewn onto some ribbon that was the length of the teardrop feather piece and sewn onto the elastic.

The final step was to add the ribbon to the tutu and velcro and voila, tutu!