Book Week Costumes - The Very Hungry Caterpillar + Simple Winnie the Pooh

Each year, as part of a week long celebration of books and reading, my children's school has a dress up day where the students are encouraged to come to school dressed up as a character from their favourite book.  My children have had 3 years of costumes so far and I have had fun making their costumes for them each year.

The first year my daughter chose "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" as her favourite character.  I wanted to make the costume in a way that was relatively easy to make while still allowing her to 'transform' from the caterpillar to the butterfly from the story so broke it down into 3 parts - a hat for the head of the caterpillar/butterfly, a body for the caterpillar and wings for when she became the butterfly.

To make the hat I bought 2 A4 size pieces of red felt as well as some green and yellow felt.  I cut out the eye shapes from the green and yellow felt and sewed them onto one piece of the red felt.  I also made 2 tubes of green to become the antennae which I laid between the two pieces of red felt before sewing an arch shape around the outside edge of the felt pieces to create the 'hat'.  A trim down to near the stitching and then turned right way out and I had my caterpillar/butterfly head.

 (Caterpillar head pieces)

For the body I decided to try to keep things simple and went for a sandwich board style costume using some ribbon and 2 different shades of green.  I cut the green out into strips and sewed the strips together to make one large piece of fabric.  I then folded the large piece of fabric in half, adding some ribbon to the top to make straps before sewing around the top and side.  After pulling the fabric right side out I sewed a hem on the piece and I had one side of my sandwich board complete.  Repeating the steps quickly gave me my 2nd side.

(Caterpillar body, laid out to show the two sides to the costume)

To make the wings I used a piece of colourful fabric that my daughter selected and created a 'wing' shape, using an old CD to help with the scalloped edges.  I cut two wing shapes out so that it was double sided and some ribbon attached in strategic places meant that it could be tied around her shoulders and looped over her wrists so that she could flap her wings around.  I sewed around all the edges, leaving a space to pull things through to the right side then sewed that space shut and the wings were complete.

(Butterfly Wings)

(The completed costume)

The rest of the costume just came from items she already had in her cupboard - a green jumper and a pair of track suit pants with a change to a pink shirt and purple skirt for as the day warmed up.  Her younger brother also wanted his own version of the costume so a 2nd one was made up minus the wings for him to wear too.

                                             (The 2 Very Hungry Caterpillars)

 (Transformed to a Butterfly)

 (The butterfly after removing the caterpillar body.  She was fortunate enough to win 'best dressed' in her class and received a book for her prize.)

There was actually a whole school parade on the dress up day where the students were going to display their costumes.  Since I had a caterpillar costume for my son I also wanted to make something for my youngest too.  I decided to dress her as Winnie the Pooh as it was an easy costume to make - a yellow wondersuit and a red shirt and her costume was organised.

(Winnie the Pooh)