abby cadabby costume how-to

as i can't seem to refuse a new crafty challenge, i of course agreed to attempt an abby cadabby costume for my dear friend jen's one-year-old, meg. it was a pretty simple undertaking, actually, and didn't require a ton of materials or know-how.

the inspiration:
what you'll need: a blue shirt (and you can improvise here: i used a short-sleeved polka-dotted onesie, as i had a bit of trouble finding a plain blue short-sleeved shirt in the height of pre-winter fashion, and you could certainly do the same thing with a t-shirt or long-sleeved t-shirt or onesie), a piece of wide blue ribbon, blue thread, about 1 yard of blue tulle, half of a yard of purple tulle, and two hair clips.

1. pin the ribbon around the waist of the onesie (or towards the bottom of t-shirt) about every 1", leaving extra ribbon in between the pinnings so that it stands away from the fabric in between, creating "loops."


2. sew ribbon on to shirt where pinned (i did on my machine, but you could easily do by hand as it isn't a whole lot of stitching). make sure that the stitches are rather strong as the tulle "tutu" will pull on them a bit.

3. cut the tulle into strips about 12" long (it works out well if they're not all exactly the same length, so i wouldn't worry too much about precise here, and obviously they would need to be longer for a bigger kiddo). you'll need 2 strips of blue and one of purple for each "loop" on the ribbon.

4. take two blue strips and one purple strip, fold in half and pull through one of the ribbon "loops" from bottom to top. then pull the loose end of the tulle through the hole you just created, pull down and tight. repeat for each "loop" (also, i had a few extra strips of tulle so i tied them on to fill the tutu out a bit more.)



5. after all of the tulle strips are tied on, i cut the bottoms of (most of) the strips so that they would form a "V" shape to look more like abby's skirt.


6. take a handful of small strips of each color, fold them up until about 6"long and hand-sew onto a hair barrette. once sewn on, clip the ends where the strips are folded and then cut into "V" shapes and you'll have some cute hair barrettes to match.



7. add a pair of fairy wings, a wand, some pink tights, and your little abby cadabby is ready to trick-or-treat!


i can't wait to see the pics of meg all dressed up and i'll be sure to share with you too!

happy halloween crafting!

UPDATE: click here to see abby cadabby... in action