Hula Dancer costume

Erin with her favorite landmark--the "Sface" needle!

So rare is it that my crafty visions come to fruition as smoothly as with this project! I had ideas of making Erin a hula dancer costume in time for my mom's performance at Live Aloha this past weekend, and I finished this late Saturday night. I probably spent 4 hours on this costume, including the time spent shopping for the shirt (value village), skirt fabric and felt (Joann).



I wanted the outfit to look a bit cartoonish, and I think it does. Finding the green stripe seersucker was a real "aha!" moment for me at Joanns. I walked up and down all the aisles trying to find something that would make for an easy to make and easy to play in "grass" skirt. I used felt for the coconut bra and lei--all sewn directly onto the shirt with zigzag stitch.



A few details that really made this project seem perfect: I bought 1 yard of the fabric, which was just enough to make a skirt that is about 4x Erin's waist--excellent for twirling. For the flowers, I started by drawing and then cutting 8 flowers out of each of the 5 colors of felt-->40 flowers. And I used all but 1 of them to make the lei and bracelets. How often do I premake almost the perfect amount of something--like never!



Best of all, when Erin saw the finished costume, she exclaimed "I love this one!" And no last minute Halloween preparations! :)

Here's a quick video of Erin dancing along with some hula dancers