Since this cat costume is designed for a teenage girl who wants to look pretty going to a Halloween party, I made gloves and leg warmers to give the effect of cat fur while not making Julia wear a bulky full-body plush costume. You will now have a long fabric tube. Turn it right side out using your favorite tube turning method. My niece Julia is thirteen now and Susan, my mom, and I were a little traumatized by how grown up she looked! Where did our baby Julia go?!? An easy way to hold up fabric ears is to use some bendable wire such as aluminum crafting or beading wire. You can also use pipe cleaners, floral wire, or even the wire from a clothes hanger.

The fabric I used to line the skirt was just a basic lining fabric from the clearance bin. It was a woven — no stretch. So I had to make sure I accommodated for that in my sizing. But that is optional. You can just turn your ears inside out as usual and have the side seams at the side. Step 3. Bend wire into cat ear shapes Making boot cuffs also meant that we didn’t have to worry too much about them slipping down when the girls were running around. They simply rested on the boots. Once your wire ear frames are inside your plush ears, fold up the bottom of the ears, trimming excess fabric if necessary. My mom then pinned the liner to the gathered crinoline and, using the sewing machine, basted it in place.

Draw a simple template for your cat ears on paper. Basically, you just need to draw a triangle that extends down about an inch at the bottom. I cut our fabric 9″x8″. I had extra room because our fabric was so stretchy, so after fitting on Julia’s tiny hands, I restitched them to make them smaller. I went to bed at 8am and got three hours of sleep before getting up to get the girls ready for the shoot. My mom went to bed at 10am for a couple hours and then joined us for the shoot. We sewed everything in less than a week! We had started sewing on Monday and had the photoshoot on Sunday afternoon. Yes, it was wild Project Runway speed sewing!) We used the hook closures for the fox and bear organza skirts and we planned to do it for this one too. But we ran out of time! A super effective way to turn a fabric tube inside out is to make a small snip in the fabric at one of the open ends, then slip a hairpin/bobby pin over that little piece of fabric and insert into tube.

While I used my sewing machine when I created this cat costume for my thirteen-year-old niece, Julia, you can sew it by hand if you don’t have a sewing machine. You don’t even need a glue gun! I gathered by pulling the bobbin threads and spacing out my gathers until they were a few inches longer than the waist of my skirt liner. Measure and cut out a piece of fabric that is an inch or two longer than your headband and double the width, plus 1″ seam allowance. Step 5. Sew headband cover Then I take tiny little bunches of fabric and stitch across them. (I will update this post with pictures of that process. It was the middle of the night, so I didn’t take many photos.)

More DIY Halloween Costumes for Girls

With hand stitches, begin to sew your ears onto the headband, taking care to put your stitches through the fabric on the top and bottom of the headband cover and also catching the bottom of the wire ear frame. Add the stopper at the butt, close up your tail, and safety pin it on. The wire will stay in place and you can easily bend the tail to form. Measure the width of your ankle, but also measure around your heel and ankle. Your leg warmer will need to slip over your ankle. For this new cat costume for teens, I made an even prettier style of cat ears. The method I used for these plush cat ears is more refined and simplified. (After making all those ears, I have discovered what works and looks best.)

So, even though I still had all the ears to make and Sophia’s hoodie to finish, I began cutting out lining fabric for a half circle skirt. Fortunately, I had JUST enough soft crinoline left, (I was using it to make Julia a tutu,) to make a bubble overlay in the same style as her fox skirt and the organza skirt I was making for Olivia’s bear costume. As you did with the gloves, you need to make sure you have enough width in your design to accommodate getting your piece on and off.If your plush fabric or faux fur is quite fluffy, then I recommend using a thinner fabric for the headband cover. Then I pinned the folded crinoline to keep it in place and made two rows of gathering stitches at the top. Julia’s waist is 25 inches, so my liner, with seam allowance, was around 26 inches. (It was now about 2am so I handed the project over to my mom and I went to work on the ears.)

Ears that are too close together will look like bunny ears. Yes, I have made that mistake a couple of times over the years and I have had to take them apart and reattach. After I had a few hours of sleep, Susan brought the girls over and we did their makeup and got them dressed.Honestly, I just want to wear these fingerless gloves and leg warmers/boot cuffs every day. They are super cozy. (I think I might steal the gloves and add them to my camera bag to keep my hands warm while I photograph in the winter.) Or if your child can't get enough of Pete the Cat, we've created an exclusive costume of their favorite groovy cat! The look is complete with his four groovy buttons and white shoes. They can wear this costume while they read his books or dance to his songs! This Pete the Cat costume is perfect for any child. You'll have them singing, "I love my white shoes!" Mercifully, my mom was helping me, so I was able to hand over the rest of the construction of the skirt to her at about 2am while I moved on to make all the ears and finish sewing Sophia’s panda bear hoodie.