Coolest Girl's Chickadee Costume

My 6 year old daughter came to me and asked if for Halloween I would make her a “cute chick costume”. It took me a few minutes to understand she wanted to be a baby chicken. Then we started to research ideas that would work and be the best budget minded we could since I have 4 young children that all needed the Coolest and best costumes possible! First of all we live in South Florida, so most Oct. 31st it is still HOT! We needed to find a way to make DD’s costume cool enough to wear for hours outside in 90 degree weather and still have a great time on the candy trail hunt.

All the feather boa idea’s were out, as well as the turtle neck shirts that we thought of for a chick costume, then my daughter and I were in a chain discount store and spied a bright chick-yellow pillow that was approx 36 inches square and made out of a “fluffy cotton”. Perfect from there we took it home ripped open 1 long seam, pulled all the fiber-fill out, made a small slit on either side seam and another where her neck would go. Next, I took a plain yellow tee-shirt and cut off the sleeves, turned it inside out and sewed it to the inside of the yellow pillow case at all the openings. Leaving a small hand size hole at the neck to “restuff the pillow”.

Finally, we filled the stuffing in between the tee-shirt and pillow area, making a large belly and a puffy tail. After I sewed the neckline closed.

Then I took a white Feather looking long sleeve shirt sewed just the sleeves to the chick sleeve holes. Then we added a pair of orange polka dot tights from the store and my daughter made a partial face mask with yellow feathers and white school glue. The final touch was to glue on an orange felt beak to the mask and hand sew a “tuft of tail feathers to the chick suit. When my daughter tried on the outfit we realized she needed some “duck looking feet”. We took a pair of my yellow dish gloves cut the top down to size, stuffed the toes with the left over fiber-fill, and stuffed her shoes inside (slip on’s).

Success the Homemade Girl’s Chickadee Costume was complete. She wore the outfit all night 3 times and each time stole the show pretending to pick her way to the door for treats. She even made the front of our newspaper!

All in all the entire costume took less than 2hours to make and under $25 in supplies total. She was truly the Coolest chickadee ever!