Amazing 15 Year Old Mockingjay Hunger Game Costume

Hello Coolest Homemade Costumes, my name is Kendall Veronick and I am 15 years old. I made a Katniss Mocking Jay dress from the Hunger Games and three other costumes this year. It took me a month and half to complete all four costumes. I got a alot of great reactions at our church event “trunk and treat”, saying it was amazing and they loved it! I found it very amusing that most people couldn’t believe I made the costumes, I guess I don’t look like I would be into that kind of stuff; but it was very gratifying to hear all the wonderful complements and comments.

The month and a half days of work I did on the costumes wasn’t anything compared to the day of completion and getting ready for the event. The worst part of getting ready that day was putting on the eye jewels and those obouions eye lashes; I’m not one for wearing makeup, so, this for me was just down right awful. People often commented on the jewels (on my eyes) asking if they hurt; and I can honestly say “no they didn’t”, it just took a little time to get used to them. After only having one sewing class when I was eight years old, the class was: How to work your machine and make a pillow case, you can imagine how many little hick ups there were to master this feat. The first dress I ever made, I ripped apart a dress similar to what I had in mind and used it for my pattern. The experience of making my costume this year amongst the others was interesting. I dyed the feathers and each one had to be glued on separately, this took the longest time to do.

The dress was sewn and hand painted on the front, and I engineered the Wings to lay on my back when not in use. With my few skills and knowledge I was quite surprised that it all came together so well, but of course there is no way, and I mean no way, I could have done this without the help of my mom and sister, even though I had to instruct them and make them redo things a few times. I’m too much of a perfectionist, I’ve been told, the old quote “if you want something done right, do it yourself”, came to mind but, I still definitely couldn’t have done it without their help.

Trying to give a HOW-TO on all this will be difficult because I myself am still amazed at how I figured it out, I think the only thing necessary to explain HOW-TO is on the wings.

I cut out a piece of the same fabric I used for the dress in the shape of a wing that matched the length of my arm and went down just far enough so the feathers could hang past and give it the look it needed. Then I found a way to fold the fabric so that it could lay behind me without being seen too much and ironed it, making the creases, then when gluing on the feathers, I made sure to keep the creases allowing me to still fold the wings. I used a type of round loop to pass my hands through and used a hook in the back to hold the wings together when they weren’t in use (I made sure the hook allowed the wings to easily become unhooked for when I wanted to hold up my arms). Finally, I used a clip to attach the wings to the dress so that I could easily take the wings off. Oh, and we bought white feathers and navy blue feather dye. The dye gave it a hint of grey which worked better than buying navy blue feathers, which, would have been not the right color blue.

The dress, I simply sewed and painted on the pattern with “opaque fabric paint” which works better on darker fabrics. I didn’t care for the fabric I used, it was ultra suede. I would now recommend a more stretchy light weight fabric.

For the hair and makeup: we found instructions for the hair and did our best to copy her makeup.

Thank you for your consideration!