Baby Sushi Costume

We were excited to celebrate Kz's first Purim this year! Since it is customary to dress up, we googled "baby costumes" and had a good laugh at the results (try it!). The truth is, we only started searching a few days before the holiday so we didn't leave ourselves much time to order anything too crazy. Instead, I found this adorable sushi costume at The Wishing Elephant shop on Etsy. The owner of the shop was invited to the Martha Stewart for her costumes and I found a step by step tutorial here. I went off the grid a little and made some changes to the design so that it would fit Kz a little better. Here's how I did it...

You'll need
 - felt sheets (green, orange, black, ivory, pink and lime)
 - a sharp pair of scissors
 - a pencil or sharpie
 - a few pieces of cardstock or firm paper
 - a hot glue gun or sewing machine if you are awesome

First, I set out to make a template for the salmon sushi part of the costume. I did it freehand while looking at the sample on the etsy site so mine came out a tad larger than the original. You can download a printable version from the Martha Stewart link above.

I traced the template onto the orange felt and carefully cut out each shape. Hint: When you trace the template, do not center it on the felt sheet. Instead, position it to the left or right of the sheet, allowing room for the tail.

I hot glued the sushi pieces onto the ivory sheet and cut around the "fish" to create an applique. It is ok for the tail to hang over the edge.

I took a white, long sleeve onesie (it's winter!) and glued the fish applique to the front. Because I strayed from the original template, my sushi was a bit over-sized. I was careful to only glue the top half to the front of the onesie to allow for pants to slide under the tail. This also made for a more flexible suit for Kz to crawl around in.

I added embellishments - grass separators cut from green felt, a black strip of seaweed, a pink piece of ginger and a ball of lime green wasabi.

I loved the front of the outfit but realized that most people would be seeing the back while Kz was crawling around, so I duplicated the design on the back leaving out the wasabi and ginger...

Adding the design to the back turned out to be hilarious. It was like a little piece of sushi had jumped off the table and escaped.

What kinds of costumes have you made for you kids? I'd love to hear about them!