For Halloween this year, my daughter wanted to be a butterfly - with BIG wings, not those inexpensive filmy things that I could pick up at the store (and save myself a bunch of money and hours with a glue gun). Dutifully I scoured Pinterest and showed her what I had found, gave her the option of choosing from the examples and then showed her the myriad of images on Google of various butterflies.
Instead of following one pattern, I took tips from each and came up with my own. As for which butterfly, thankfully my daughter chose one with a single (looking) wing and an easy wedge shape, the Blue Morpho. This cut my production time in half since I only needed to create 2 wings instead of 4 (2 tops and 2 bottoms). Additionally, I am a frustrated non-seamstress. I have a sewing machine, but we don't speak the same language and therefore, it only comes out of the closet in dire emergencies. Fortunately, this project only required my glue gun!
Since I benefited from the tutorials, I decided to try my hand at writing a tutorial for the wings I created. So here goes!
Materials:
1 1/2 yards black felt1 1/4 yards shimmery aqua blue fabric
1 yard Pellon double-sided fusible ultra firm stabilizer
hot glue gun and glue
can of 3M Super 77 spray adhesive
thick strip of cardboard
1 pack medium sized clear sequins
1 inch thick black elastic
scissors
Olfa cutting wheel and Olfa cutting mat
computer paper
wide packing tape
pencil
Step 1:
Tape 6 sheets of computer paper together to make a big enough sheet to create a template. Looking at a picture of the Blue Morpho on Google Images, I freehand drew the wedge shape of one wing. And cut it out.
Step 2:
I laid this template on one half of my white fusible ultra firm stabilizer material and traced the wing shape onto it. And cut it out. I did this again for the other wing.
Now I had 2 wings and the "inside" of my wings to make it somewhat stiff but not too heavy or awkward.
Step 3:
I folded the black felt in half and laid the white wing shapes on top. Then I cut out the black wings, giving myself a little edge of about 1/4 inch around. Since the felt was doubled, this gave me 4 black felt wings - one for each side of the white fusible stabilizer.
Step 4:
I sandwiched the white stabilizer between 2 black felt wing cutouts.
Here is where I made my first mistake. I pinned around my wing edges, and since the stabilizer is fusible, I attempted to iron the felt to the stabilizer. The only thing that came from this futile attempt was I warped my Olfa mat. :-( Total bummer. So skip the pins, grab your can of spray adhesive, and go outside.
Working in small sections, I glue sprayed the white stabilizer and smoothed the black felt down. This stuff is very sticky and can be quite messy, and it's white, which doesn't do you any favors on the outside of the black felt.
Here are my wings, yea!
Now we have to attach them together.
Step 5:I took a trapezoid shaped piece of the stabilizer and 2 black felt trapezoid pieces a little bigger than the stabilizer. Taking a heavy duty cardboard box that originated from Costco, I cut the side piece that would fit nicely between my daughter's shoulder blades and hold the wings together. Eyeball the size to fit your needs. I took it outside and glue sprayed it together.
Both sides.
I left that little opening between the wings for my daughter's back - the same width of the cardboard and placed the trapezoid sandwich on top, the cardboard piece fitting snugly between the wings. And carefully spray glued the overlapping parts to the wings.
<--- Outside of wing.
Okay! Now onto decorating the wings...
Inside of wing. --->
Step 7:
Back to the image of the Blue Morpho butterfly on Google. I took my paper wing template and freehand drew the segments of the wing. I doubled the lines so that my pieces would be a little smaller and leave the black showing between the segments.
Then I cut them out.
Step 8:
Here's where I made my second mistake. But it turned out okay in the end. I'll tell you both what I did, and what I should have done.
I folded my shimmery aqua fabric in fourths so I would only need to cut the segments once. What I figured out after I cut them all out, was that now I had 2 segments right size up and 2 segments wrong side up. Not being a seamstress, and therefore with little to no experience, I had to figure this out on my own. But it all ended well, butterflies do have an "underside" too!What you can do to have 4 wing sides with the shiny side out is to cut your fabric in 4 squares. Pin 2 squares together and using the paper template on top of the fabric, cut out the segments for one wing, then do it again with the other 2 squares. Be sure to switch the direction of the segments so you'll have 2 mirrored wings.
Step 9:
Laying the "skeleton" of the paper template on top of the wing, I placed the blue segments like a puzzle onto the felt. I removed the "skeleton" and hot glued the edges of each segment to the felt.
I chose the underside of the wing to be the side I would attach the elastic loops for her arms to wear it like a backpack. I made sure I placed the blue segments wrong side out for this side of the wing.
The shiny side would be on the back so people walking behind my daughter would see the "right" side.
This step was very time consuming and tedious, fair warning!
Now for the straps.
Step 10:
I held the wings to my daughter's back and using pins, experimented with the placement of the elastic. I cut the elastic into 14 inch strips and hot glued them into place.
Step 11:
Time for the final embellishment.
Hot glue the medium sized clear sequins to the wing edges.
For the rest of her costume, I found a headband at Claire's that was the same color blue with big blue flowers. I intended to wrap a black pipe cleaner around it for antenna, but she chose not to.
For the body, we found a cute black sequined top, black leggings, and black shoes at Target.
The wings turned out so well, I'm thinking about wearing them to the preschool I teach at for our Harvest Festival the day before Halloween!
Hope y'all enjoyed my first tutorial!!
Happy Halloween!!
