easy ZEBRA costume

THE COSTUME:

At the end of summer, my bean watched the movie Racing Stripes.

She instantly fell in love with a whole new animal. the ZEBRA.

She has made me find every kids national geographic type of video or worksheet for her to study over.

You can read more how she feels about zebras here.

It really wasn't that big of a surprise when she told me that is what she wanted to be this Halloween.

And it is super cute and was super easy.

The cool part about this idea is once we are done with this costume, we can remove all the extras and she has a hoodie for the rest of winter too.

gather your supplies:

*Fleece zebra hoodie (I got mine at Kohls for $4)

*black yarn- for mane and tail.

*embroidery floss to attach ears and tail to hoodie

*2 pieces of cardboard, a square of white felt and pink paint for ears

(I actually used 2 laminate counter samples I had from lowes)

so just trace around your squares of card board right onto your felt-

then round one side as you cut them out. (cut 4)

Paint the inside of your zebras ears with pink paint on 2 of the ear pieces.

Once dry, stitch one plain and one painted ear together.

If you don't want to sew, use hot glue or fabric glue.

slide your cardboard piece into the ear to keep the ears from being floppy.

Zebras don't have floppy ears ;)

Just quick stitch the ears to the top of the hoodie with embroidery floss.

next I made the tail.

loosely wrap your black yarn around a book several times.

You want it to be thick enough to have 3 decent sections of "hair" to braid.

Take a small piece of yarn and thread it through all of the loops on one end of the book and tie them all together tightly.

Use scissors to cut through all the loops on the other end of the book.

You should now have a "pony tail."

Lay it on a table or your legs and separate into 3 sections and braid.

Take another piece of yarn to tie the end of the tail tightly.

Trim the bottom even.

You can stitch the tail to the back bottom of your hoodie or just use a safety pin.

okay, so last I added the mane.

This was the trickiest part probably because I just used the biggest needle I had and it was hard to thread the yarn through. So I tried to keep the yarn on the needle and use from the bottom so I didn't have to keep re-threading it!

I had to separate the sections of yarn and only use 1 ply at a time.

A bigger needle probably would have made this part easier ;)

Starting at the front of the hood pull yarn through and tie at the top leaving 2 about equal sides.

I left about 1/4 inch between pieces. But there aren't any rules. I didn't trim it all even because I liked the way the mane looked sort of matted and wild. You could trim it up even or make it more short and spikey. What ever you think is perfect for your little zebra.

I picture mine running through the wild a little unkempt.

I wish you could have heard the "woop, wooping"

{zebra noises} my little bean yelled. she couldn't wait to get this "adorable zebra" on.

she's sort of a minimalist and wouldn't let me paint a nose or anything on her face.

Maybe on Halloween?

for pants? 

we got lucky and a thoughtful friend of mine sent her some zebra leggings with a adorable outfit.

Could that be more perfect for her costume? 

I think a solid black pair would work just fine though too. 

Lots of zebras have solid black leg bottoms.

I love Halloween.

And I really, really love that she let me make her costume this year.

Those days for my two older monsters are long gone.

It's too easy to just go to the store and pick out a costume.

Where is the creativity in that?

I love using your imagination on Halloween too.

So fun.

happy haunting ;)