Caterpillar to Butterfly!

What happens to a very hungry caterpillar?  Why, she turns in to a beautiful butterfly!  I came up with the idea for this costume after giggling at my six month old in her sleep sack.  She sleeps in these 'wearable blankets.'  Basically a sack with armholes and a zipper up the front.  We joke that she looks like a glow worm.  I decided that she needed to be a caterpillar for Halloween.  When else can I dress her up in a bunting costume like this?  Never.  She'll be mobile soon enough.  Anyway, after thinking about the caterpillar costume for a while I decided she needed to be a caterpillar that turns in to a butterfly.  Even better.  So I set about figuring out how to make her costume convertible.

First thing I did was make a paper pattern.  I traced one of her sleep sacks.  Just one pattern piece.  The back is cut on the fold, front pieces I added seam allowance for a zipper.  Then I drew out the pattern pieces for the wings.  I just used my pattern piece for the bunting for size comparison.  I added an extension to the wings to allow them to be stitched to the back of the bunting.

I sewed the wings first.  Everything is made out of fleece.  Finally, my local fabric store comes to the rescue.  I cut out random organic looking shapes (keeping it symmetrical of course) from scraps of fleece for the design on the wings.  I interfaced the top wing pieces with some super stiff home decor interfacing to give a little structure to the wings.  Then I stitched on the smaller shapes with a zig zag stitch around the edges.  I kept it all rough and quick.  I really liked the way it turned out.  The fleece shapes puffed up after they were stitched down.  I sewed the back wing pieces to the top with some jumbo ric rac sandwiched in between.

Next, I had to figure out the order to put it all together.  I cut the two front pieces for the bunting and sewed a zipper in between. Then I cut two back pieces, both on the fold.  One back piece was used for the back of the bunting, the other was used to make a pocket to hide the wings in.  The wings were stitched to one back piece.  You can see how I stitched them in the photo.  The second back piece was cut at the top and bottom to form a kangaroo-like pocket for the wings.  Both side openings have a 9" zipper.  I sewed the side zippers to the pocket piece first, then to the back piece leaving some extra room for seam allowances.  Once the zippers were sewn and functional I sewed the top and bottom of the pocket, enclosing the wings.  Then I sewed the back/pocket piece of the bunting to the the front, being very careful not to sew over the side zippers.  And it worked!  I was psyched.  I hemmed the neck and armholes of the bunting but that wasn't totally necessary since fleece doesn't fray.

The little cap was made from a bonnet pattern with two tubes of fleece stuck in the seams and tied in a knot.  And the leaves were an afterthought, but I think they make the costume.  Just two layers of fleece stitched to look the veins on a leaf.  And that's it.  Then I put my sweet baby in her costume and soaked up all the obnoxious cuteness.  Happy Halloween!

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