Last Halloween, my almost four year old said he wanted to be Captain Hook. Since we’ve been trying to do themed costumes for the family, I jumped on this one! My five year old was happy to be Peter Pan, and I knew we’d have no trouble sorting the rest of us out. I love making what I can for costumes, and this theme really leant itself to homemade creativity. They only know the Disney animated feature version, so that was the look we were going for. I’ll tell you how we put it all together.
Captain Hook
Since Captain Hook was the first to speak up, we’ll start with his costume. I knew the leggings would be important, and I couldn’t find any in stores that would work, so I went to a thrift store. I found some great velour pants that were the exact color of the ones in the Disney animated feature. I used his jammie pants as a guide for how tight to make them.
I pinned around the guide, then cut with a good seam allowance around the pins.
I sewed them up and tried them on. They were stretchy, but not as stretchy as leggings should be, so we knew it would be a one-time use outfit.
I put a pair of my white socks on him, up over the leggings, to his knees.
For Captain Hook’s jacket, I picked up a bright red women’s small-grain corduroy jacket at the thrift store, which made a perfect long coat on my little guy. The rich texture really leant itself to the old-time pirate vibe. This was probably the most expensive thing I bought for this project, at $9. I had a spool of yellow ribbon, which I sewed onto the front edges of the jacket, which would be worn open.
For the hook, I got stiff gray felt and traced a hook shape that would be sewn into a cover to go over the hand.
I sewed the inside out cover onto the hook.
I added a handle inside for my little guy to hold onto, or slip onto his wrist if he needed a break from it. I just left the inside out cover and sewed the handle on.
Turn in right side out and you have your hook!
For Captain Hook’s shirt, I used his white button-down shirt and picked up some white cotton fabric. I finished the edges of the fabric, and folded it back and forth accordion-style and stuffed about four inches of one end of it down the top of his shirt. Looked perfect!
For the hat, I asked around, and a friend was going to loan me his, but Grammy saw the perfect one at the Disney Store and bought it. Thank you, Grammy!
Peter Pan
On to Peter Pan! He would need leggings too, which I didn’t find in stores, so I got a big bright green t-shirt and did the same process as the Captain Hook leggings, except I folded the top over and slipped in elastic, then sewed it closed.
These weren’t super stretchy either, but looked perfect!
Peter Pan’s top was going to be super easy. I measured my little guy to see how far down I wanted the shirt and sleeves to go. I got out some bright fleece I had, folded it in half, found the midpoint of the fold, used a cup to create a rounded guide, and cut.
I unfolded it and added a V-shape to the hole. I had measured to make sure it would accommodate my guy’s large head.
Then I cut the sleeves out and sewed.
Last, I cut the jagged edges into the sleeves and bottom.
Peter Pan’s hat was easier than I expected. I got two pieces of felt and put them around my guy’s head and pinned and repined until I had the right shape that would actually fit on his head.
For some reason, this was the part of his costume he was most excited about.
I cut the pieces, leaving seam allowance, and sewed them together.
I turned it right side out and used thread to gather the top a bit to give it a curve.
I added a feather, which I sewed on. Not a permanent attachment, but it looked better than having a big blob of glue. We were careful with it, and the feather never fell out.
Since Captain Hook had a hook, I knew Pan would want a dagger. I traced and cut dagger handles from yellow felt and blades from gray felt, leaving a bit that would go down into the handle.
I sewed the blade pieces together, then pieced that between the two handle pieces, and sewed the handle pieces together. (Sorry about the poor lighting. Late night sewing.)
I was going to sew a belt from brown felt, about an inch wide and add a loop to the dagger handle to slide on the belt, but Grammy got him a pre-made belt with holster. And he looked just how he imagined!
I decided it would be easiest for my baby to be a lost boy, so I asked around for any animal costume, and this monkey one, which someone gave us, reminded me of the bear, and it worked great.
Daddy ended up being Mr. Smee. I was going to use painter’s tape as a guide to paint blue stripes on one of his white shirts, but the painter’s tape ended up being the stripes! And he could take the tape off and use the shirt again! Blue shorts were hard to find, so he wore his blue basketball shorts. I made the hat from two pieces of red felt and wrapped felt around fabric scraps to make a ball to sew on. I picked up the glasses at the dollar store.
The kids wanted me to be Tinker Bell. I had a big green t-shirt, which I laid my bathing suit on as a guide and cut the fabric and sewed it, similar to how I made the leggings. It was stretchy, so I sewed it to a tight size and didn’t need to add any elastic. I used thread to gather the top a bit, for a touch of a sweetheart neckline and cut jagged edges around the bottom. This could have looked a lot better, but was the last costume of this project and I didn’t care as much about mine. I wore a hair donut and a piece of blue ribbon in my hair. I was going to get wings at the dollar store, but Grammy picked up these cool light-up wings. The glow wand is also from the dollar store. I could’ve used some poof balls on my shoes. I never thought I’d say this, but I wished I had a ton of body glitter to finish it off. In the end, it was good enough.
We were a hit at the church festivities, and the boys loved playing pretend in their authentic feeling costumes!
Can I buy this Peter Pan costume from you?