DIY Halloween Costume: Lilo & Stitch

This year for Halloween my best friend and I decided to dress up as Lilo & Stitch. I'm a huge Disney fan and I love this movie so I was really excited when she agreed to do it with me. Normally I would have fought to be Lilo because I just love her and she's adorable but realistically speaking, my friend looked more like her than I did. She literally made the perfect Lilo with her nice tan skin and gorgeous long black hair. So, I ended up being Stitch, who is also very cute. 

After looking through Pinterest for some inspiration, we decided we would make our costumes from scratch. This made it even more fun because it would mean having to take a trip to Michael's (my happy place) and having a chill day of working on our costumes while watching Halloween movies. 

It only took us a few hours to make our costumes and we were so happy with the way they came out. So, I thought it would be fun to share with you guys how we made our costumes in case you may need some ideas for next year and also happen to be a fellow DYI lover!

Lilo Costume

 Materials:

- Plain red dress (or oversized t-shirt)

- 4 sheets of white felt paper

- Leaf Cutout

- Fabric Glue

-Sharpie

- Scissors

1. Google Lilo's leaf dress pattern and print it so that it takes up half the paper. 

2. Use the black sharpie (as it works the best on felt) to trace as many leaves as you can on the white felt paper. We arranged it so that we would be able to fit 3 on the 8 1/2 in. X 11 in. paper. 

3. Carefully cut them out (don't forget to cut the center piece too!). 

4.  Spread them out on the shirt and rearrange them in the way that you want. We were able to get 12 leaves from the 4 sheets of paper and they were more than enough for the oversized shirt.

5. Use fabric glue to secure them onto the front and back dress/shirt.

6. All done!

Stitch Costume

The Stitch costume is a little more difficult to make and there are so  many different way you can go with it depending on what you like! I personally made mine very feminine and fun by making a tutu.

 Materials:

- Plain blue t-shirt 

- 2 sheets of light blue felt paper

- 1 sheet of blue foam paper

- 1 sheet of burgundy foam paper

- Blue ribbon

- 4 to 5 rolls of blue tulle

- Stitch ears cutout

- Blue acrylic paint (unless you have a blue headband)

- Headband

- Brush/Sponge Brush

- Measuring tape 

- Scissors

- Fabric Glue

- Glue Gun

- Sharpie
- Blue socks to accessorize you look :)

1. To make the tutu, first use the measuring tape to measure your waist and see how long your ribbon should cut.

2. Add about 24 inches to that measurement so that you will have 12 extra inches on each side to make a bow in the back (for example my waist is 28.5 inches so in total I had to cut 52.5 inches). You can make it a little longer depending on how big and long you want your bow to be.

3. Wrap the ribbon around your wait and tie it to make a bow This will let you make sure the ribbon fits around your waist and the bow is the length you like.

4. Untie the bow and make a knot on each side where the ribbon ended. This is so you can distinguish where to start wrapping the tulle and what part of the ribbon is for the bow.

5. How long you cut the tulle will depend on your preference of how long you want it to be. When you measure the tulle, make sure it is twice the length you want it to be since it will wrapped to the ribbon. For example, I cut my tulle into 42 inch strands and when tied around the ribbon, the tutu ended up being 24 inches long.

5. The best way to wrap the tulle strands is just to individually loop each strand around the ribbon. I ended up needing 5 rolls of tulle but you may need more or less depending on how poofy you want your tutu to be. The "poofyness" is determined by how you spread out the tulle. The closer together they are, the poofier they will be. 

6. When you're done wrapping the tulle, your tutu should look like this.

7. To make the ears, google a cutout of Stitch ears.

8. Trace the ears onto the blue foam paper. When tracing the ears, make the bottom of the ear straight rather than following the sharp edges. This will make it easier to attach to the headband.

9. Use the same cut out and make a slight change to the shape by making a slight arch shape starting from the outer corner. It should end at about the middle of the ear.

10. Trace and cut on the burgundy felt paper.

11. Use a glue gun to attach the burgundy piece (inside of the ears) to the blue piece.

12. Use the blue acrylic paint to paint the headband (a sponge brush works best for this). I painted an old headband I already had, but if you have a blue headband, you can skip this step.

13. Wrap the bottom part of the ears around the headband and use the hot glue to glue it.

14. To make stitch's belly, use the light blue felt sheets and lay them on the center of the t-shirt. I had to use two sheets because they were 8 1/2 in. X 11 in. but if you can find a longer one, that would work better.

15. Make a long oval shape and cut it out.

16. Use the fabric glue to glue the felt paper to the t-shirt.

17. Finally, cut three small thin rectangles, glue them together, and then onto the top middle of the shirt to make it look like his fur.

The End Result!

We had so much fun making our costumes and we were obsessed with the end result. It didn't take long and all together we ended spending less than $25 on the materials for both costumes. So, if you don't want to spend too much money, making your own is the best way to go :)

I hope you enjoyed this post and gave you some ideas for your costume! You can click here to check out my Instagram and see us wearing them :)

Happy Halloween!

-xoxo, Diana