How to Create Childs Hedgehog Costume in 9 Easy Steps

In Need of Fancy Dress Ideas?? 

I was recently tasked with creating a childs hedgehog costume for under £30 for my friends daughters' school play. Below is my step by step guide on how to do this...

You will need:

• 1 beige hoody 
• I chose an adults small hoody. This can vary depending on the size of the child or even adult! just pick a hoody that is large and will cover the body so that it can be just worn with leggings or tights
• Coloured felt sheets (A4)
• I chose cashmere brown and cocoa brown from Hobbycraft: felt sheets
• I also picked up a couple cheetah print ones to as a design feature
• Glue gun and glue sticks
• Again, good old faithful hobby craft do a bundle for cheaps: Glue gun bundle
• fabric scissors
• pins
• needle
• Beige or cream bias binding
• Beige/hoody coloured thread 
• Sewing machine 

STEP 1: prep your felt

• I folded the A4 sheet in half to get an idea of where the middle was in order to cut in half
• then cut zig zag line down the middle of that (please see below) to create strips of hedgehog quills.
• I also folded a couple of the sheets widthways into 3 to create smaller zig zag strips for the head.

 

STEP 2: Arrange your 'Quills'

• I firstly aligned the zig zags in a steeped fashion in alternating colours to create a depth of texture
• Make sure that the spikes are off centre from each other to build up the quill section as show below 
• Add in a row of the 'cheetah' felt every 3-4 rows for colour depth.

STEP 3: Glue the Quills on

• Once happy with the positioning dispense a line of glue onto one side of the straight edge of the felt and glue directly to hoody
• Continue up on to the hood and leave the arms free
• At the mid-point of the head lay the quills face the opposite direction so that the point face towards the head

STEP 4: Creating the Ears (easy)

• To make an even simpler version of the costume follow these section then you are done!
• Cut an ear shape out of the light felt and a smaller inner ear shape out of the dark felt. These need to be bigger than the quills so that they are distinguishable.
• Pinch the bottom middle of the ear with the inside on the inside and glue at the bottom to create volume
• glue the ears in to place
• Et voila! you're done!

STEP 4: Creating the Ears (professional)

• Firstly cut inside the line where the sleeve meets the armhole to remove the sleeves
• Keep these bits of fabric to cut the ears out of
• Create an ear shaped template like the one shown below, approx 10cm in diameter or whichever size best suits the size of the head. This is so that the ears are the same size.
• Pin to the arm fabric and cut 4

STEP 5: The inner ears

• Cut a smaller ear shape out of the cashmere coloured felt to create an inner ear. I zig zag stitched  this into place but you could also glue this on 

STEP 6: Assembling the ears:

Easy option: glue the front ear piece (piece with the inner ear section) to a back piece and repeat for other ear

• I made a small dart in the centre of the ears to give them some volume.
• Start the dart at approx 0.5cm in and finish just below the centre of the ear
• Repeat on all four pieces
• Pin a front section to a back piece with the wrong sides together as shown
• Stitch around the outside at 1cm seam allowance
• Make small incisions at the curved edges to allow a smooth curve when turning in the right way

STEP 7: Affixing the ears:

• Lay the hoody out flat in front of you and pin where you want the ears to go
• Glue or stitch into place
• To stitch:
• Using a zig zag stitch first lay the ear facing towards the front opening of the hood and stitch one line
• lay the ears back and zig zag stitch one line
• this should allow the ears to stand up

STEP 8: Finishing the sleeves:

• Take the bias binding and lay use it to cover the edge of the sleeve opening
• create 4 tucks at evenly spaced intervals around the armhole
• These tucks create volume in the body of the costume whilst making the armholes smaller
• This will give a more professional finish.

STEP: 9 Finishing off

• Give the costume a good shake and using your fingers, brush upwards through the quills to create a slight curl.
• If any of the felt pieces feel or look like the might come loose glue back in to place.

There you have it! A finished hedgehog costume in an afternoon!

The pheasant xx

Maleficent

Finally I got to see Maleficent in 3D and found it shocking, loveable and inspiring. I wanted to begin this post by telling you how refreshing it was to find a movie with a strong female hero. Maleficent is a far stretch from the comforting original and its archaic reliance on a man to save the day. It shows one woman’s both physical and mental struggle in overcoming betrayal in love to become the hero in many different ways.

I found myself empathising with Maleficent (Angelina Jolie), through both the darker times and in her ability to defeat the demons within herself. I felt an element of justice was served and although ultimately the film did end happily (it is PG after all) I found it a more fulfilling happiness, one that makes sense. Rather than leaving the theatre dreaming of ‘prince charming’ coming along to make everything better, I felt it connotes a feeling of ‘you can do anything you put your mind to’, ‘don’t let people get you down’ and ‘stay true to yourself’. In all, I feel this is a great film to show young girls as it provides an adult truth in a visually pleasing and relatively colloquial manner.

To the costumes… As you can probably tell I love anything fantastical or futuristic. Give me 3D, visual effects, lights, silhouettes and surround sound. I love it all. Her are some great screen shots of Maleficent in her iconic cloak with some amazing examples of the visual effects you will find in the film further on down the page.

In the beginning we meet Maleficent as a small child (Isobelle Molloy), innocent of the dangers and evil that lurks outside of the enchanted forest. Below are some of the mystical creatures and stunning enchanted forest.

 The Pheasant x

Labyrinth

Welcome to the crazy world of Labyrinth.

The film pretty much does what it says on the tin! Sarah (jennifer Connelly) wishes her brother be taken away by goblins, cue Bowie, the goblin king Jareth played by David Bowie whisks him away and Sarah only has a small amount of time to solve the labyrinth and get the brother back.

Not one of my "faves", THE COSTUMES however... WOW!! Highlights for me include a stand up collar Dracula would run and hide from, puff sleeves, sparkly headwear, leather, lace and feathers.

The mix of textures and contrast of silhouettes makes the whole thing worth while and visually exciting. The puppetry shouldn't go unmentioned as Jim Henson has done cracking job as always in bringing such fantastical creatures to life.

The Warriors

Everybody's' favourite leather waistcoat clad gang. The film begins with the warriors being framed for the murder of Cyrus, leader of the Gramercy Riffs, the largest gang in New York. Everyone is keen to find the culprit and bring them to justice and the film follows the warriors as they battle each of the gangs who try to capture them on their way back to coney island.
Some of the gangs they encounter on the way include the Punks, the Lizzies, the Boppers, The Orphans, and the Baseball Furies.

This film offers some great costume ideas and is well worth a watch for all those interested in late 70s style and as always some great haircuts.

1st Costume

I have decided to upload these pictures of my first costume. This is the final outcome of the garment i made for Marina Sossi of Marina sossi group for her Shakuhachi & Butoh performance at the Bath Fringe festival of 2009. This was a very successful collaboration and a great experience for me as to what it would be like to work in this field. I have been inspired ever since. I enjoy the idea of designing and collaborating with others combining feedback and ideas to produce a strong outcome. Let me know what you think.