On the Wings of Love

I wanted to share this ingenious idea of "wings" for a bird costume. I decided to be an "owl" for Halloween last year because of a cute owl hat I saw on Etsy.com. It's for a baby boy, but I asked the shop owner to make it for me a non baby boy. She said, "Measure your head", so I did and that was that.

The next part was trying to figure out how to make wings. I've never learned how to sew so I had to find something that you could do by gluing fabric onto fabric. I found this idea, alas it does involve sewing :(

However, the internet did not fail me and I found this post, that was actually inspired by the first post I saw. I realized that I could modify this with fabric glue!

This was my course of action:

- First I measured my shoulder to my wrist to see how much fabric I would need

- Then I went to Joann Fabrics and bought white fabric for the base of the "wings", blue and green fabric for feathers, and fabric glue

- I told the sales associate at Joann Fabrics my measurements and they cut the fabric accordingly

- I cut the white fabric into the desired shape that the 2nd post recommends, this post
- Next I cut the blue and green fabric into "feathers"

-What I did was draw a leaf like shape on a piece of paper (it's recommended to use card stock because it's a stiffer piece of paper) as my template for the feathers like this:





Leaf like template

-Now I had two varying feathers, one with a strip of the leaf like feathers cut out and the other individual feathers

- I glued down the strip of missing feathers first then put an alternating color of individual feathers on top of the strip (I chose to utilize the feathers both ways so I could use all the fabric, waste not want not)

- I did cheat a little because my mom can sew I had her sew the string onto the back of the wings to tie around my neck and each other. She also attached the wrist straps to the end of the wings.

- If you don't know anyone who can sew you can also use the fabric glue to attach the straps or find a video on youtube that will teach you how to do a basic stitch with just a needle and thread.

Materials:

-Scissors you don't need to use special fabric scissors
-3 yards of White fabric
-2 yards each of Blue and Green fabric
-One can of fabric glue, I actually bought a spray can to make it easier to do a large section instead of individually gluing pieces on.
-One package of string type thing to connect the wings together and tie around my wrists

*I'm short 5'1 so my "wing span" is probably on the shorter side of the spectrum. For taller people I would add a yard or 2. The best thing to do is tell the sales associate your measurements (from shoulder to wrist) then they will tell you how much fabric you need. That is what I did because I have no idea what is appropriate for sewing.

The final results:





Close up of feathers



One wing




Owling it up




This had to be one of my favorite Halloween costumes because it was fun to make and fun to wear. I like wearing the hat as well when it's cold out so I feel like I got a 2 for 1 special. I hope you non sewers were able to get some help from this post to create wings of your own.