Coolest DIY Indian Costume - Indian Warrior Princess

This DIY Indian costume actually took about 17-18 hours to create all together, with my husband hard at work on the headdress and my daughter and I sewing, beading and painting the rest. It was a great project to do with the family and was fun to create. We usually go out of our way to use recycled materials but we just didn’t have the resources for this one.

The DIY Indian costume headdress took the most time, none of us had ever attempted to create an authentic style headdress before so we did some research before we got started. We ordered the feathers online in a bundle of 50 to make sure that we had enough. We ended up using 20 full size, rounded, all white turkey feathers total. Each feather had to be wrapped with a thin strip of beige felt going up the stem leaving some space at the bottom to allow a cord to string through, and glued with hot glue. Then dark brown felt was wrapped around the stem the other way. We used red embroidery thread to tie around and hold the felt together and add some color. The ends of the feathers were colored with black sharpie pen and given some spots. A piece of cord was threaded through the holes at the ends of each feather. A clear piece of string was threaded through each feathers stem about mid-way down to maintain the integrity of the headdress and keep them from going every which way. A strip of Native American style fabric that we picked up at Joann’s was perfect to cover the front but it was a bit thin so we sewed it to a piece of old reusable grocery bag to reinforce it and make it cushier to wear. The fur was put under it to clean it up and add authenticity. Felt was used for the circles on the sides and faux fur for the dangly sides.

We stopped by Joann’s for the fabric and extras, then Walmart for the face paint. My daughter had a pretty good idea of what style she wanted for the dress and at 13 is quite the seamstress, so she cut the material and sewed it to fit, using any leftover pieces as additional flare. I sewed some faux fur and beige felt onto some black UGG boots to change the color, and tied leather strips and feathers around to tie it all together. My daughter beaded the necklace and we worked on the face paint together.

She got a lot of compliments on this DIY Indian costume and we all had a great time working together. Can’t wait for next year.