Bumblebee and Bee Keeper Halloween Costume Tutorial

Today we have one of my lovely pattern testers sharing an adorable DIY Bumblebee and Bee Keeper Halloween Costume tutorial with you all. Take it away, Natalie….

So what I did was use an old jumper pattern from Mary Margaret’s younger days and just did modifications.  For instance, instead of doing buttons or bows at the shoulders I did Velcro.  And around the bottom I added elastic to make it, well, look less like the dress that it was.  I lined it so I wouldn’t have to worry about finishing the seams and added stripes of yellow fabric (both fabrics shown above are broadcloth by the way).  If you’ll notice I didn’t finish those edges either–I wanted my bee to look a little fuzzy.    Then I stuffed it with some leftover quilt batting, added a quick little hat I made from a vintage pattern I had on hand, and dug through his sister’s old clothes to find black leggings and a turtleneck.

For the wings I cut two kind-of, sort-of wings out of felt.  I really did just “wing” it (oh, I crack myself up sometimes!).

Above I laid it on my cutting mat so you can get an idea of the size.  Notice that I did one “flat” side.  Then I sewed the two pieces together right sides together (I used a 5/8″ seam allowance but that’s just what I normally do).

I then trimmed the seam and pressed it open.  After that I cut out two 1.5″ of sew-on Velcro in black.

I then pinned and sewed the loopy side to the back of his costume.

{Oh, I should add that if you made your costume out of fleece you would technically only have to sew the loopy side of the Velcro–the fleece/felt/loopy Velcro combination usually make things “stick” pretty well without needing the scratchy Velcro side…not well enough for a nineteen-month old wild man, but for some?  Yeah, it should cover it.}

And he makes a pretty cute bee {and she makes a pretty darling beekeeper} if I do say so myself.