Not My Mom’s Kitchen

Starting with a great pre- made base is the way to go! Finding pajamas is an added bonus when working with kids! I found these tie dyed gender neutral super soft pajamas on Zulily (personal fav!)

After securing the base, I added felt and sequins to create the chest. Using felt sheets from Joanne fabrics, I created the oval and applied the single strands gold sequins with hot glue. Arlene’s Fabric glue made felt to pajama application easy peasy!!

After adding the chest, next came the fur. By watching the clearance rack at the fabric store, I was able to secure a highly discounted brown fur for the added mittens and tail, plus the headpiece. Luckily I had an old memory foam bed topper and was able to cut a rectangle to cover in fur (Arlene’s for the win again!) and secure to the rear end of the pajama bottoms.

Mittens were traced from a current pair and glued again with Arlene’s. I used gold fabric paint to add the paw prints for extra detail.

The headpiece was the most involve. Using a sweat head band as the securing base, I added an additional piece of cardboard to counter support the head made of memory foam. I cut the bear head (ears and face) out of memory foam, then secured to the sweatband using Arlene’s and good ole needle/thread. Once secured I draped the fur over the top leaving the center of the face uncovered. Using felt sheets I cut out the bear face shape and muzzle circle. Amazon sells bear eyes and nose sets- using one of those sets I added eyes and a nose to the felt face. Again with Arlene’s fabric glue I adhered the face to the memory foam leaping the fur edges tucked safely behind the felt of the face. Rubber bands helped to create ear definition by wrapping them around the base of the ear over the fur. Additional stitching was used to secure the fur to the sweat band creating a full hat bear head.

We used these costumes for a dance recital. But this could easily be transferred to any animal using a pajama base and the sweatband memory foam head piece. Good luck!!