Tiger Costume Tutorial

I know it's a little late to be posting a costume tutorial the day after Halloween but Taylor was so sick this week, we really didn't even know if she'd go out trick or treating. And although she's been telling me since the summer she wanted to be a tiger for Halloween, she came up with several other ideas once October hit so I held off on making her costume. (Seriously, how the heck was I supposed to make a DOLPHIN costume??? And, Friday night I was trying to convince her to be a ghost so I could just throw a white pillowcase over her head -- Oh, come on, I'd cut holes so she could see and breathe!) In the end the Tiger won out and I was frantically sewing this together Friday night and Saturday afternoon/evening. So, here's how I made this really easy, budget friendly costume:

Supplies - Orange Fabric (I bought a shower curtain on clearance for $10 - it was 72"x60" and I used about 1/2 of it to make a size 3T costume.

Black Fabric (I used black T-shirt that I got for free at a seminar last year)

Pipe Cleaners, Thread, Elastic band (optional for waist)

For the Pants, I used this tutorial as a guideline. I didn't make an elastic waistband, the pants fit her pretty snug, and then I just added a safety pin at the waist. Again, I wasn't even sure she'd be wearing it this year so I wanted it to be big enough to use for Dress Up play and to wear next year if she wanted to.

For the shirt, I used the Sienna Dress pattern as a guide. In cutting out my fabric I narrowed the bodice and shortened it so it was more like a long shirt than a dress.

AFTER CUTTING all my pattern pieces and BEFORE SEWING, I cut long strips of the T-shirt fabric. Don't worry about the width of the stripes. Random and MeSsY is GOOD in this step of the project :). mine varied from about 1/2" to 1" and I cut them so some of them were narrower at one end and then thicker at the opposite end.

Arrange your stripes on your orange fabric so they look like tiger stripes. Pin and then topstitch them to the orange fabric. Then sew your pattern pieces together.

For the ears, I cut out ear shapes from the orange fabric. I sewed black strips of fabric to the ears -- before sewing them together-- then I put 2 ear pieces right side together, and sewed 1/4" around 3 sides of the ear, leaving the bottom open. Then I curled up a pipe cleaner (loosely) and stuffed it into the ear to give the ears some stiffness. I did the same for the other ear. Then I sewed the ears to the strip of black fabric and simply tied a knot in the black fabric to make a headband.

I also made a tail that isn't shown in the pictures. I simply cut a long strip of the orange fabric (about 2 1/2 " wide), sewed on black stripes and sewed along the edge and one end of the tail. Then I wound together pipe cleaners, end to end to create a wire the length of the tail. I used multiple pipe cleaners to thicken it up (does that make sense? I held about 3 pipe cleaners, then I wrapped those to the end of 3 other pipe cleaners, so my finished wire was about the thickness of 3 pipecleaners).

For the nose, I cut out one section of an egg carton, painted it black (actually had hubby paint it black because I was working frantically on sewing the rest of the costume!) then poked 2 holes in the bottom section so she could breath through it, and 2 holes on either side of the egg carton. We used a strip of black fabric, cut in half and tied it through the one of the holes on each side, to be used as the strap to secure the nose to her face. We pushed 3 pipe cleaners through each of the other holes on the side, tightly folded the ends to avoid any sharp points, and we were DONE!

Of Course we had to snap some pics and she had to practice her ROAR!!!

The Fine Print: As mentioned, this was a last minute project, no pinning was done in making this project and the quality of the craftsmanship is much less than excellent. The finished product does not do justice to the patterns/tutorials used and cited herewithin. The ears could have been much better constructed. My sewing machine was very cooperative through the entire process of making this costume, but toward the end, it sensed that I was becoming waaaay too impatient and sewing much too fast. It also decided it DID NOT like sewing through pipe cleaners and it just wasn't gonna do it. So, I respected that and opted to use a safety pin to attach one of my ears rather than risk breaking my beloved sewing machine. Hence, the ears look a little funky. The first photo shows a better picture of the ears.

Variations:

Other ideas for creating a Tiger costume...

Paint black stripes on orange fabric instead of sewing the stripes on.

Use black face paint for the nose/whiskers. (My daughter has very sensitive skin so I intentionally opted to NOT use face paint)

Make a square hat and tie 2 knots on top for the ears.

I hope you all had a rip RoARing Good time on Halloween...what were your costumes?