Octopus Baby costume

McKenna's Halloween costume ended up being a major hit this year for Halloween.

Yup, you guessed it, she was an octopus.

In all honesty, I was concerned it wasn't going to come out the way I had envisioned because it really came down to the wire. I hadn't tried the whole finished product on her until the day before Hallowen so there really wouldn't be much to do if it hadn't worked out! It turned out better than I had envisioned!

I came across several tutorials on how to make this costume easy and inexpensive. Per Usual, I made this craft project more difficult than it needed to be, and I often do that. It's just my personality. Why have things simple when they can be super complex?!

What you need for the tentacles:

• 4 pairs of stockings/men's socks (or 8 pairs if you want to keep the stockings)
• Thick Elastic (I used 1.5 inches)
• Pillow Stuffing
• Sewing Materials (needle/thread)
• 1.5 inch ribbon (optional)

What you need for the hat:

• Beanie
• Buttons
• White felt
• Plastic string
• Hot glue gun

I was originally concerned because I was finding stockings at like $5/pair... I was not looking forward to forking over $20+ on octopus tentacles that I could never use again. I lucked out finding pink stockings on major discount .... $1.50 a pair! I was able to nab all the same color too!

#targetdoesitagain

There is a way I have read to do this in order to salvage the stockings (hence the suggestion for 8 pairs of stockings), but it seemed complex and I found them at a good enough deal to not worry about it. I believe you end up tucking the second leg into the first leg.... but again, my brain was frazzled so don't quote me on it. Not sure what we would do with identical pairs in the same size and color anyway!

I started by stuffing the legs of each of the stockings with pillow stuffing (which a $5 bag was MORE than enough).

I then cut the legs off of the stockings. I suppose you could cut them first, but since this was my first try I didn't know how far up I wanted to stuff them.

With all 8 tentacles stuffed and cut, it was time to start attaching them to the elastic.

To get the elastic ready: measure around the child's waist and then double it. The reason you will be doubling the elastic is because you essentially will be sandwiching the top of each stocking within the two layers of elastic. I started out affixing them the tentacles with safety pins.

 

You'll want to do this so you can space the tentacles out evenly around the elastic. The spacing may depend on if you are making this costume for a crawler or a walker, then again, you'd likely want them space around the back with a gap in the front either way.  That way there is a bit of space in the front for their real legs to crawl/move/walk.

With the tentacles pinned, I began sewing.  NOW, I AM NOT A SEWER. I don't know the first thing about sewing.  But I figured just taking a needle and thread in and out a ga-jillion times would make the tentacles stay long enough to make it through the night. And to make it a little more appealing, I sewed both the top and the bottom of the elastic so it looked finished off (I don't have a picture of this, but I don't need to go flashing my awful sewing skills around the internet anyway).

The beanie was a hat we had lying around that had never gotten any use. I just cut oval shapes out of felt, glued on 2 black buttons, and cut some plastic-y type string from the craft store for the eyelashes.

I paired it all with a basic, pink onesie, again, that we had lying around.

 

And to address the [optional] pink ribbon. Since I used white elastic and her entire outfit was pink, I wanted to mask it in some way. Additionally, I also wanted something that was darker pink somewhere else in her costume other than her hat.  It helped pull the whole costume together. All I did was measure out a ridiculous amount of ribbon, centered it in the front/middle of the elastic, and ran a couple of stitches through it. I didn't sit perfectly over the elastic, but just kinda flowed around it and took attention away.

 

My Little Octopus was a hit.... and now, Momma is just having a hard time finding out how to store these suckers.  Because of course, there's no way you can get rid of Baby's First Halloween costume!

You can see a few more pictures of her Halloween Costume here.