Paw Patrol Halloween Costume Tutorial

Okay I have a confession to make, I love Halloween but hate dressing up. Hate it. Halloween costumes with kids is way more fun, and this year I made my first attempt at making K a Halloween costume, this DIY Paw Patrol Halloween costume. And I’m joining 88 other bloggers in a fun Halloween costume hop with Jamie from Creating Really Awesome Free Things to give you all sorts of great DIY Halloween costume ideas!

Love this DIY Paw Patrol Halloween costume from playpartyplan.com, such a clever way to make the ears and tail

Before you get all mad because I promised you a Paw Patrol costume then gave you a costume without ears, there are ears, I promise. K was just not being cooperative when it came to the ears, so they’re missing from the photos. But you guys, I have the trick to making the best pointy ears ever so you have to keep reading to see how I made them. And let me tell you, they are really cute on the hat, but you’ll have to take my word for it. For now, you’re just going to get lots of cute pictures of K in a hat with no ears or no hat at all. Have I mentioned how fun it is trying to take photos of a toddler?

There are two things that K loves right now – dogs and his car. When I decided to try and make K a homemade costume this year, I knew it needed to include those two things. He also loves Paw Patrol, and it combines those two things so it was pretty much a no-brainer. And his car is blue, so I had to make him Chase of course. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, maybe you should just skip to the bottom of this post for 88+ incredible homemade costume ideas! I mean just look at the talent of these bloggers.

Okay so back to my costume. Another reason I chose it was because this was my first attempt at making a costume, and I knew it would be easy. Seriously, so easy. If I didn’t suck at sewing, it would’ve taken me less than an hour to make the entire thing. That’s easy enough that you could do it the night before Halloween and still feel like supermom for doing everything you do AND making a homemade costume.

Okay, now let’s talk about how I made it.

Supplies:

1/8 yard fur or faux fur
1 wire hanger
1 sheet white iron on vinyl
1 sheet yellow iron vinyl
1 sheet gray or silver iron on vinyl
2 inches elastic
1 brown button (try to match the fur color)
Dark blue shirt and matching pants with belt loops
Police hat
Wire cutter
Brown thread
Small piece of pillow/quilt stuffing
Sewing machine (or you can hand sew with needle + thread)
Silhouette CAMEO (or scissors)
Hot glue gun
Car (optional)

Instructions:

Step 1 – The first thing you’re going to do is cut your hanger. You’re going to want to cut off the triangles at the two ends of the hanger (for the ears) and then one long straight piece from the bottom of the hanger. The hanger is going to be the trick I talked about earlier! Once you’ve cut your hanger, measure the size of your ears by putting the pieces of hanger onto the fur.

Step 2 – Cut around each of your wire “ears” twice (for a total of 4 ear pieces), making sure to leave about an inch on the outside of the wire where you’ll sew them together. Do the same thing with the long straight piece; put it on the fur and cut about an inch to either side and an inch on the top and the bottom.

Step 3 – Sew your ears together by putting right sides of two of the ears together and sewing along the two long edges. You’ll want to leave the bottom edge of the triangle open to stuff it later. Once both of your ears are sewn, do the same thing with the long tail piece. Turn it inside out, put the right sides together, and sew along the outsides of the tail leaving the bottom section open to stuff.

Step 4 – Once both ears and the tail are sewn, flip them both right side out. If you need to, you can use a pencil to help flip the long tail right side out. Once flipped, place the wire hanger on the inside of each of the ears and sew along the bottom of the ear to close it completely around the wire. Repeat with both ears.

Step 5 – Wrap the long tail piece of wire in stuffing, stuff the tail with the stuffing (and wire), then sew the bottom of the tail shut. By adding the wire, you’re giving a stiffness to both the ears and the tail to make them more realistic. This is especially perfect if you want to bend the tail slightly since the wire hanger will bend and stay that way, which wouldn’t be the case if you’d used just the fur and stuffing.

Step 6 – Sew one side of the piece of elastic to the end of the tail. And then cut a small slit, a little smaller than your button, on the other side of the elastic. This is how you’ll attach the tail to the pants.

Step 7 – Sew a button on to the back of the tail. This is where better sewing skills would come in handy. I’ll admit it, I’ve never sewn a button on using a machine so I did it by hand. Once the button is on, you can attach the tail to the back of the pants by looping the elastic through the belt loop and fastening it by popping the button into the slit you cut into the elastic earlier.

Step 8 – Hot glue the bottom of your ears to the top of your hat so they’ll stand up. This is where pictures would come in handy so sorry for not having any!

Step 9 – Cut out shapes for the shirt and hat on your Silhouette CAMEO using this free downloadable Silhouette cut file I created. Iron them on once cut out. Or if you don’t have a Silhouette, you could easily cut them by hand. I just did a shield, star, paw print, and little arrows to go on the sleeves. And don’t make the same mistake I did, the stars go below the arrows on the sleeves (pointing up), not above.

And that’s it! I hope that made sense. I honestly think that the tutorial probably made it sound harder than it really is, so I hope you get it and can make a super cute Paw Patrol costume for dog-loving kids too!

Jenny says

Posted on 10/28 at 8:55 am

Thank you for sharing!

- BritniV says
  
  Posted on 10/29 at 10:50 am
  
  You are so welcome!
  
teachermommy says

Posted on 9/17 at 11:14 pm

Thanks for the idea. We made one for our son and it looked great!

dolledupdesign.net says

Posted on 9/28 at 6:10 pm

What an adorable costume! My kids have just discovered Paw Patrol and would love this.