Giraffes and Leopards

If you follow on me on twitter, you will be familar with my trials and tribulations of making a giraffe and a leopard costume for the SnugBoys.

We had arranged to go to see The Singing Kettle, and all the children are meant to dress up as their favourite animal. “Easy”, I hear you say. Well, my boys were not content with a cat or dog, or even a donkey (of which we have a costume in the wardrobe from last year’s Nativity). Oh no, I was given strict instructions – SnugBoy#1 wanted a leopard, and SnugBoy#2 requested a giraffe! Thanks, boys.

Never one to pass up a challenge, I (reluctantly) agreed. So, off I went in search of fabric – Ebay was my friend. I measured the children, and used some of their clothes as templates to draw the shape of the costume on the lovely faux fur-type fabric. Once cut and pinned, I checked, roughly, that it would fit. All seemed ok, so off I set with the sewing. I just did a very simple straight stitch on my machine, and they looked pretty good. I found some zips (after having an in-depth discussion with SnugBoy#1, I persuaded him that leopards should have brown zips rather then the luminous yellow he favoured) and sewed them in down the front, in a babygrow style. I made tails by making a tube of each print fabric, and stuffing with wadding, then for the giraffe I added brown wool at the end for the fluffy bit that giraffe’s have. I then just sewed these inthe relevant place on the back of the costumes.

Now for the headgear. I bought two cheap black hairbands from Asda, and for the leopard made cat-ear shaped ears, with white felt on the front. These were stuffed with wadding again, and stuck on to the hair band. For the giraffe I did larger ears, and also had the horns to do – again tubes of fabric was all it took, stuffed them, and put brown felt over the top.

I think the end result is actually pretty good – and the SnugBoys seemed to think so too!