Halloween 2017: Chase’s Furry Body

Let’s start with the ears.

I wanted to make a pair of ears to clip on to the hat, rather than an entire headpiece, although I did think for a moment that I could glue them to a headband to wear under the hat—that seemed to be fraught with all kinds of problems. For clips, I’m using those snappy hair clips, a large size, and I made two clip holes on the backs of the ears for wearing options. The clips have the advantage of giving a slight inward curve to the ears, so they don’t flop over—Chase is a German Shepherd and needs ears that stand up firmly. I found this pattern for Chase ears and modified it by hand, drawing in the bottom curve:

I used the body fleece for the ears, with pink felt pieces for the centers, all pieces faced with iron-on craft interfacing for a stiff ear. As you can see, when clipped to the hat, they stand up straight.

Now the furry dog body, with tail.

I bought this very useful pattern for one-piece animal body costumes, and it is more useful than you can tell from the pattern information on the envelope.

I thought that I would have to deal with those chest or belly inset pieces, and I was just expecting to make them out of the same dark brown, instead of an alternating color as shown on the pattern. Turns out that those pieces are not inset, but sewn on top of a solid body piece, so I just ignored those pieces. It would be nice if the pattern showed an option without them.

I decided that a separate top and pant would be easier to function in at school (you know, like going to the bathroom!), so I cut the pattern top just below the waist and put in a separating zipper. The pants just needed a turned in casing for waist elastic, and I skipped any elastic at the cuff. I used one of the tail patterns, but cut it shorter and to come to a point for more of a German Shepherd look.

The whole costume turned out as I envisioned it; it fit well and was comfortable. I tried to snap a photo of my granddaughter posing in the costume, but she is a perpetually moving object, so this blurry one in bad lighting was the best I could do. At least she’s smiling.

Update: here’s a better photo of the little dog child parading at school:

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