Make Your Own Jaquin Costume
This year, for Halloween, my eight-year-old daughter decided that she really wanted to be a jaquin from the new Disney television show Elena of Avalor. Great! Under normal circumstances, I would be able to place an online order for the costume and wait for it to arrive on my doorstep. Well, what I quickly discovered is that this costume does not exist, apparently the show is so new that the Jaquin costume for Skylar is nowhere to be found! Time to do what my mom always did, make it myself! For those of you who may not know Skylar, here is a photo of our costume goal….
He’s cute, right!? The first thing I did was look on Pinterest for ideas on how to make wings and luckily I was able to find a few blogs with some great tips. I especially liked the instructions given for these parrot wings on the blog Makeit-Loveit. Here is what you will need to make your very own jaquin costume:
-Yellow, light blue and dark blue felt(more of the yellow because you will use this for the frame of the wings and your tail)
-Mustard colored leggings, beanie, and long sleeved thermal(I found mine at Old Navy)
-Fabric shears
-Large sheet of paper to make a sample wing before cutting fabric.
-1/2″ black elastic
-Hot glue gun
-Sewing supplies
I started by creating a template for my wings by first drawing it on paper and holding it up to my daughters outstretched arms, just to check the size before actually cutting fabric. Once I was completely satisfied with the size, I cut out my wings using the yellow felt. Then I made a similar paper feather template that I would use to cut out each feather.
As I cut out the feathers, I pined them in a row starting along the bottom of my wings. I decided that my character Skylar the jaquin, was going to have two rows of light blue feathers then I would switch to dark blue. After each row was pinned, I had my mother-in-law sew the row on(yes, I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t know how to sew…yet!)
Before you sew all of the feathers on, you should attach your elastic wrist straps and shoulder straps. You can see in the above photo that I used yellow felt to cover over where the elastic attaches to the underside of my wings. Here is how my wings looked with all the feathers attached, I actually attached the last 2 rows of feathers using my hot glue gun to avoid seeing any sewing lines.
To finish the costume, I added spots to my leggings and the long-sleeved top using my trusty hot glue gun! I also made a tail from the yellow felt and stuffed it with poly-fil and added feathers to the tip of the tail. For the hat, I cut out two feather flaps and attached them to the sides of my beanie.
I have to say, this costume was a huge hit with my daughter! In fact, I still have a hard time getting her to take it off before bed! Hopefully this inspires you to make your own jaquin costume! Thanks for stopping by my blog!
