DIY Sloth Costume - Easy Homemade Onesie

When your daughter tells you that she wants to be her faviourite soft toy for Halloween this year SLOTHIE, and with only one week to go until trick or treat I needed to move fast and make something easy, quick and simple that would keep my daughter happy.

It also had to look like her faviourite plushie below.

This costume can be made for both boys and girls with colour variations of your choice.

I searched the local fabric stores and found a cheap blush pink faux mink fabric, it was super soft and almost matched the colour of SLOTHIE perfectly.

A few items are needed to make this cute sloth onsie, which you can find online or at your local craft store.

What's needed

1. Pink fabric for body

2. Felt; dark pink, white and black for mask

3. Silver glitter foam for nails

4. Elastic for mask

5. Craft glue for mask

6. Hook and loop Velcro or a long zipper.

7. Sewing machine with pink cotton for body.

Now all you have to do to make this simple diy costume is to follow these easy steps.

I dont normally follow patterns and find it easier if i make things from scratch or copy other clothing pieces that already fit to make my kids costumes.

For this one I found a jumpsuit but if you dont have one you could use a jumper and pants which fits your child or a ready made onesie pattern which you will need to slightly alter.

If you are tracing a jumpsuit like I did to make the back you need to:

A. Fold pink fabric in half.

B.Fold your childs onsie in half.

C. Trace onesie on edge of folded pink fabric.

One you have traced pattern, cut it out.

Now you need to cut out the front.

For this you need two pieces, so on the edge you have just cut which is still folded, put the pattern on top and trace again.

Cut this out.

Because the pattern was put on a cut edge you now have two pieces .

Now repeat these steps for the arm ensuring you continue to make the arm an extra length to ensure costume looks like a sloth with really long arms.

Now you need to make a hood for the costume, which I did by finding a nice sized jacket with a hood in my daughters cupboard.

I copied the steps above.

Folded two pieces of pink fabric together, traced the hood (on its side folded) and cut it out to attach to the costume.

Now with most of the pieces cut you can begin to sew them all together.

Next step is to make the cute sloth mask.

This needed to be light as my daughter dosnt like to wear masks and her plush toy isn't a real sloth colour so it needed to be pink white and silver to match.

I used the same pink fabric and white and pink felt for the base.

I cut the white felt smaller than the pink fabric to give the white a boarder of fur.

I cut out another piece of pink felt in the same size as the pink faux mink for the back of the mask to make it stiffer but to keep it soft and light.

I measured where my daughters eyes would be and marked two slots on the pink felt on the back.

Once the base has been cut next step is to cut out the eyes.

I used silver glitter foam and black felt for the eyes.

They don't have to be perfect so long as there is a silver boarder around the black with a tear drop shaped half drooped eye.

Use a piece of black felt to cut out a half circle with flat bottom. This will be used for the nose.

Before you glue it all together make sure the eye holes meet up with the one drawn on the back earlier.

After matching up eye holes, glue it all together with clear fast drying glue and sew in the elastic to the back of mask on either side after measuring your child's head circumfrenece and cutting elastic to length.

Once the mask is dry cut out the eye holes with sharp scissors.

I cut another circle from the black felt And used these for the sloths eyelids. Cut the circle in half and glue with flat edge down.

Once you have sewn the body and hood together now you can finish off the hands, feet and nails.

With the foam, cut out 12 x skinny triangles approx 8cm long.

Hem the cuffs of the arms and the cuffs of the legs

Insert 3 x silver foam nails to the inside of the sleeve ensuring the nails are facing the correct way when costume is on.

You can now glue this together or sew a line straight across nails to keep them in place.

Repeat with other sleeve.

So your child is still able to carry things, cut a slit in the back of the sleeve where your child's hand will be.

If the fabric dosnt fray, you don't need to sew a hem. However you can if you want to finish it off..

For the feet you will need to cut out 2 x rectangles a bit longer than your child's foot size and round off one end.

On the round end glue 3 x nails on top of the pink fabric and sew the straight edge to the front of the costume leg.

Sew two elastic pieces to the bottom of the foot panel straight across to keep panel on top of foot and to put shoe inside of.

To make the arms more realistic I stuffed the bottom of them with some wadding so they were stiffer when my daughter moved.

Before your child can wear this Halloween night we need to fasten the front.

I'm not a fan of sewing zippers unless the item is going to be worn alot. So I opted for an easy hook and loop velcro solution.

You can find these at most fabric stores. My local supermarket stocks this which is where I picked it up for $4.00.

First you need to cut a length of the pink faux mink fabric (the length of where a zipper or buttons would go at the front) and cut out a piece approx 6 cm wide to the length of the front opening.

Hem this piece and sew it to the right side of the onsie panel.

Cut to length the hook and loop strip and sew hook to back of the pink strip you just sewed on.

Sew the loop strip to the top of the pink edge on other side of onsie.

This should have created a flap which now closes the costume and fasten it together with the Velcro.

Now the costume is complete !

To match this year's costume we thought we would also match our treat bucket.

So after finding a cheap plastic bucket at our local dollar store we spray painted it with blush pink chalk paint and my 9 year old son hand drew the face back on with sharpie.

My daughter couldn't wait to try on the costume even though there is still 4 more days to go until the big spooky night.

She had fun playing in the garden and being mummy sloth to her fav plushie.

It really was an easy costume, with the time of completion being only a few hours from start to finish, you really can make this in one afternoon, I'm no sewing expert and I did it 😆