Dragon Costume

Halloween is just days away but starting in early October I asked Jake what he wanted dress as.  The last few years I just bought his costume and he willing wore it.  But since he is now starting to get the idea of Halloween I wanted him to decide what to wear. 

He had quite a few ideas such as a robot, superhero, R2D2, dinosaur and dragon.  Every day he would say something different, but eventually he kept saying dragon, so that’s what we decided. Of course half way through making the costume he changed his mind back to a superhero, so we had to let him know it’s too late.  He seemed to take it well once he saw his costume.

I was hoping he wanted to be a red dragon but he was insistent on a green dragon.  My idea was simple, buy a green hooded sweatshirt and matching green sweat pants (2 pair so I could use an extra leg to make the tail), but I couldn’t find anything.  They had plenty in red, blue, grey or black, but no green.  I checked Wal-Mart, Kmart, Sears, JC Penny, and finally Kohl’s. 

It was at Kohl’s that I did find a cute green pullover hooded fleece sweater with a dinosaur on it which I decided would have to work.

Of course there was no matching pants, so I had to make those.  I found some green fleece at JoAnn’s that matched close enough.  This was my first attempt at making pants but I didn’t think it would be too hard.  I figured I could just take an existing pair and cut two pieces and sew them together. 

Luckily I found this blog explaining the proper way to make pants before I cut any of the fabric. I made a template on a paper bag and used my yard stick to mark for seam allowance and also because I wanted him to be able to wear them over another pair of pants. I don’t have any pictures, but the blog link above explains it all step by step.

Next up was the tail.  I found this great blog on dragon tails, but they were straight and I wanted Jake’s to be curved up at the end.  So first I drew a picture of what I wanted it to look like, then drew it on a paper bag, then cut out the fabric by placing the template bottom on the fold.

I also wanted to continue the spikes on the head of the sweatshirt onto the tail, so I bought blue, yellow and orange fleece to match.  I made some the same size and two sizes larger and attached them to the tail pointing towards the middle.  Fold the fabric onto itself and sew it up. Turn it inside out and stuff it.  For better instructions and to see how to add the strap and finish it up see the blog link above.

Now at this point the costume could be either a dinosaur, alligator or dragon, so I decided it needed wings to make it clear he was a dragon.  So of course I found another blog on how to make dragon wings.  And for the fabric I found this amazing skin-like material in a gold metallic. 

I have no pictures on how I made the wings, but I followed the tutorial and used metal hangers to give it form.  I made them a bit larger, so I had to cut the hanger into more pieces and it doesn’t lay as nice, but it still looks pretty cool.

 

And finally, here he is in his dragon costume.  He loves it and I’m so glad I was able to make his Halloween costume.  Next year I think I’ll just take him to the costume store and let him pick out what he wants.