Chick-A-Dee

Happy Halloween!  In honor of Halloween I thought I would share my little DIY costume I made for Eli.  It all started when Stacey sent me this chicken costume from Etsy.  I thought it was absolutely adorable BUT for $75 there was NO way I was going to be buying it.  That is when I started to do my research on how to make my own and came across this Martha Stewart chicken costume plan.  I decided to use the basics from this plan and run with it.  I knew, however, that I would have to adapt since the costume was meant for toddlers and older.  The first thing I did was gather my supplies from Hobby Lobby.

2 feather boas, 1 long sleeve 3/6 month onsie, 1 short sleeve 12 month onsie, and 2 pieces of red felt. (Not pictured: white baby cap, white leggings and 2 pieces of yellow felt.)

I began by following Martha Stewart's design and placed the long sleeve onsie inside the short sleeved onsie and stitched the 2 together at the neck and legs leaving a small hole to stuff with batting.  I decided that instead of using batting which would be an extra cost I would stuff with grocery sacks which I had an abundance of if you remember this post.

 

The stitch job was nothing special aka really crappy and took me about 30 minutes.  After stitching the two pieces together I hot glued one feather boa on to the front by going back and forth across the onsie and then did the same thing for the back.  About this time I was feeling pretty proud of myself and my feathered piece.  That was until I tried it on Eli...the feathers were so dense and the onsie was so tight I thought he was going to asphyxiate on feathers trying to get it over his head.  Major fail...all I could think of was a headline that read "Homemade costume goes bad for Halloween".  I was just about to throw in the towel for the chick costume when I decided to give it another go.  This time I was not going to stitch the smaller onsie to the larger one.  This would give me much more stretching room to get it over his head and away from his face as I put it on.  

I pulled off the feather boas that I had previously hot glued to the stitched onsie and started over with the 12 month onsie (good thing the onsies came in packs of three!!).  I also decided that it would be easier to cut the feather boas into about 18 inch strips and hot gluing them piece by piece.  

I was on a roll, piece by piece I hot glued the chicken feathers in place but as the feathers became more and more dense it became difficult to see where I had placed the glue spot on the onsie when pressing the feather boa down.  So difficult that I actually missed the glue spot with the feather boa one time and got my finger instead.  A battle wound from the hot glue....

After crying over my burn and smothering it in Neosporin I went back to work, this time on the hat.  Using my red felt, I folded it in half and cut a wavy pattern on the fold giving me two exact same pieces.  I then hot glued the top of these together and stuffed each of the waves with little scrap felt to give it dimension and then hot glued it to the white baby cap.  

At this point I was thinking that I was finished.  I wanted to figure out something for his legs but my thoughts were to just find some yellow tights.

Eli was excited about his costume

Unfortunately, yellow tights could not be found at any local stores around me.  I headed back to Hobby Lobby and picked up a white pair of leggings, yellow dye, and some yellow felt to make the chicken feet.  I read the directions for the yellow dye but it stated to soak the fabric for 45 minutes...after about 10 minutes the leggings looked pretty dark so I took them out and washed them as directions indicated...I guess I got lucky because they came out the exact color of the yellow felt I had purchased.

 

All that was left to do was the feet.  I wasn't exactly sure how I would make his feet so I just started brainstorming and ended up folding the piece of felt just as I had with the red topper on his hat.  I drew out two little 3 toed chicken feet and cut them out giving me 4 separate chicken feet pieces.  I hot glued around the edges leaving the top for his feet to be inserted.  On the top piece of each foot I cut a slot so his foot could sit in it like a shoe and attached 2 pieces of velcro to fasten around his ankle.  I was in Atlanta when I finished this part and did not have my little red camera handy to snap some in between pictures...so I am sorry if that part was confusing...hopefully you can kind of get the idea by looking at the finished product.  

I am pretty sure it wouldn't matter what costume I put on him, but I have to say he is the cutest little chicken I ever did see! ;-)

If you click on the picture to zoom in you can see the strap around his foot.