making the duck

My daughter wanted to be a duck for Halloween. I have no idea why, but it stuck. I tried to convince her otherwise, as I didn't know how I was going to create a duck. Most of the duck patterns I saw were for infants, and seemed a little beyond my sewing prowless. Having a homemade costume is important to me, my mother always made my costumes growing up. I have fond memories of going to walmart or the big fabric store in the big city to look through the pattern books. I have never had a little plastic fabric from k-mart and hopefully I can always cater to my kiddo's in that way.

I took one of her shift style jean jumpers and used that as pattern for the main body of the duck. I made the neck and arm openings a little bigger as I didn't want to worry about putting in a zipper and to account for Halloween in Iowa (lots of layers under costumes). I add a little flutter sleeve to mimic a wing. I took a 20 in strip of fabric, gathered it into a ruffle and sewed it into the arm hole. To add more volume to the "wing look" I crafted little tutu's to the size of her upper arm. These were not attached to the dress, but more like bracelet's. I also took additional tulle, bunched it up, sewed a big puffy portion together and attached it to the back of the dress to act as the ducks tail. I added a little tulle flower I made to a clip for her hair. The legs needed to be orange. I used orange kool-aid (an all-natural dye+ much cheaper than RIT) to make a pair of old white tights orange. The last detail the hubby helped with. We took a sheet of crafting foam, he traced some duck feet onto the foam. I cut the feet out, punched a couple of holes into the feet and secured with elastic to cover up her shoes. It worked wonderfully. The bill of the duck was a 0.97$ foam visor from the craft store, unfortunally they did not have one in orange. I bought a red one and covered it in orange felt. I think the whole costume ran about $7.00.