Halloween Costume: Peregrine Falcon

Hi Angel!

I hope you're enjoying the weekend. The Daylight Savings time switch is once again kicking our butts over here, with Henry up at 4 a.m. instead of his usual 5 a.m. Yawn... It is also gross and rainy outside, so we're looking at a Sunday at home, and I need to fish something out of my bag of crafty tricks. Maybe we'll do some collage or painting, or maybe bake some cookies! That actually sounds pretty good! How about you?

I wanted to show you Ben's finished Halloween costume. I got it done on Tuesday evening, and while it was slightly last minute, it came together pretty well. Ben wore it to school on Wednesday morning for the school Halloween party and was so proud of himself!

Here's my Peregrine Falcon and his little bro Dinosaur (an old costume, made by my mom) on Halloween morning:




I changed my plans a bit after my original sketches. I ended up creating more of a poncho for the wings and body of the falcon, rather than a shell and separate wings attached to the arms. We also skipped painting spots on the front of the body.







With the thick layers of felt feathers, the poncho at first made Ben look like a big fluffy chicken. So I sewed the wing layers together with horizontal lines under the feathers, from the tip/edge to where the torso would be. This made the wings flat aside from a "tunnel" for each arm to slide through. That fixed the issue!






For the "helmet", I copied the shape and size of a winter hat, then added a few pin-tucks (is that the correct term?) until the fit was as good as it was going to get. The beak is filled with a little polyfill and painted with grey and white fabric paint. There's elastic under the chin to keep it in place. Next time, I would line the inside with a soft cotton -- Ben was a trooper and kept his helmet on the entire day but complained of itchiness.






The claws were quite tricky to make. I copied some firefighter boots from an old homemade costume, enlarged them and cut out claws that I top-stitched down the middle and at the end to give them a 3-dimensional quality. I painted the "nails" with black fabric paint. From far away, I think they actually looked like claws, but from up close, eek.










Overall I am pretty pleased with how it turned out! I have definitely learned some aspects of apparel and costume construction since last year, and am proud of how this costume turned out. It is always such fun to deliver a successful execution of your kid's vision. Ben was thrilled!

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For those of you interested in the construction of this costume (I hear there's a lot of kiddos obsessed with peregrine falcons thanks to Wild Kratts!), you can see my process and progress in these two previous posts:

Part 1 - Halloween Prep: Peregrine Falcon
Part 2 - Who's Ready for Halloween?

I hope that helps! Don't hesitate to leave me a comment with questions.