Tinkerbell Costume Walkthrough

Here is a simple walkthrough that shows how I made Jane’s Tinkerbell costume.

l love Halloween. Well, let me rephrase that… I don’t really care at all about Halloween, but I LOVE costumes!! So it’s understandable that as Halloween approaches, and wearing costumes becomes the norm, I get excited!

Last year was Jane’s first Halloween and we did our “first annual matching family costumes” and dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, Her Grandmother, and the wolf. It was so fun! and this year we’re going as Tinkerbell, Captain Hook, and Peter Pan. EEeeeee I’m excited haha.

Thrifting Material for my Tinkerbell Costume

For the Tinkerbell costume, I basically went to a thrift store and looked for anything that was green. I found this green woman’s dress to use. I also found the cute little white shoes at the same thrift store. The material draped over the shoulder is a torn curtain someone was tossing. I’ll be using that for something else (you’ll see).

The color of the dress is just perfect, I couldn’t be happier! However, the actual material was miserable to work with. Slipping and sliding all over the place while I sewed. However, it was all worth it. I’m so pleased with how This costume came out. It’s just something to think about if you go in search of something to cut up. It’s not all about how pretty the color is.

Prepping the Material

As I wasn’t planning on maintaining the structure of the dress at all, I decided to just take it all apart to get as much material out of it as I could.

The dress was not gathered at the waist, what you see in the pictures is just a belt. So all I had to do was cut open the side seams, around the armholes, and the shoulders. This left me with the front and back pieces, the sleeves, and the lining material. Worked out perfectly and got me just enough fabric to use.

The Pattern

For the bodice, I used THIS pattern from Prettyprudent.com. I had never used this pattern before but I would definitely recommend it for any summery little dress, costume or not. It was super simple, easy to understand, and I was able to adjust the location of the snaps to make it a perfect fit. I do see myself using this pattern again in the future.

I made two changes to the pattern.

The first thing was that I added a bit of elastic across the back of the dress. The pattern was designed for the creator’s 2.5-year-old, Jane is a small 20-month-old so it was a little big on her. With this simple fix, the dress fits her perfectly.

Secondly, I changed the way the skirt attaches. Her pattern creates a really clean finished waistline. But as this is a costume, I didn’t feel it needed to be perfect. And also, the way I layered the skirt would make that a lot harder as well.

Speaking of which… The skirt!

I did not follow the directions in the pattern for the skirt. Instead, after cutting out the bodice pieces, I cut as many triangles as I could out of the rest of the dress. I used both the dress and the lining material to give some difference in color and texture. I did not measure them and they are not perfect triangles, but that was kind of the point. My intention was to make her Tinkerbell costume look like it was made out of leaves, and well, leaves aren’t perfect.

After cutting them all out, I hemmed 2 sides of the triangles and did my longest straight stitch across the third side to gather them and make them leaf shape.

Once I had a pile of “leaves” I separated them into three stacks. The stacks were for three layers of the skirt. The top layer was the smallest leaves, the middle was the medium-sized leaves, and the bottom was just a few of the longest leaves.

Starting with only the top layer (the smallest pieces) I pinned them across the raw bottom edge of the bodice, right sides together and pointing upwards. And stitched in place.

For the next layer, I laid the pieces so that the points filled the spaces between the smaller ones.

And the same with the final largest layer.

If any of this is unclear, please leave a comment below and I will clarify as best I can.

I surge stitched across the entire seam, once all of the leaves were in place, to give it a cleaner finish and prevent fraying.

Finishing Up The Tinkerbell Costume

The last step was just to install snaps. I used green metal snaps, the kind that just punches through the fabric. As it is just a costume, I don’t really mind that they show from the outside.

The last thing I did was make a pair of bloomers out of the remaining lining fabric. I didn’t use a pattern, just sort of winged it. The dress is pretty short, we can’t have her diaper hanging out for everyone to see. lol

Final thoughts

I’m honestly incredibly happy with this Tinkerbell costume. I don’t think there’s really anything I would have done differently. It’s so cute and I can’t wait to show you the entire costume put together on Halloween!

Follow my Instagram or Facebook for more updates, I’ll definitely be adding better pictures later as well as more tutorials for the other pieces of our costumes.

UPDATE

Halloween was a smashing success! I do love a good costume… and this costume was GOOD. She looked so stinking cute and everyone loved it! I have added more pictures, just keep scrolling!