I must’ve had a look of horror on my face when my little lady came home and requested a Roly Poly bird costume for book day last year… I mean what the actual…?! But a little look on Pinterest and I then started to gather all the materials. I enjoyed making this one so much and the little lady is still wearing it a lot a year later, so I thought I’d share the process.

Materials

• Blue felt in various shades (I used this one Amazon.co.uk)
• Old pair of kid’s sunglasses
• Glue gun
• Webbing for arm supports
• Ribbon (I used this one from Amazon.co.uk)
• Spray feathers (try these amazon.co.uk)
• Pipe cleaners (try these)
• Fleece blanket (I like these from ikea)
• Spotty or plain tights (models own)
• Tutu made from tulle (models own)
• Blue t-shirt the more sequins the better (models own)
• Sewing machine (optional)

How to

Firstly I cut one big semi-circle shape from the Ikea blanket. This needs to be big enough to fit the arm spam of your child. And will make the base for the wings.

Next were the feathers for the wings. I cut a template out of cardboard and folded each sheet into four, drew around the template and then cut it out with sharp scissors. Ensuring that each piece had four equal semi circles on it.

Before I attached the feathers I added four webbing straps to the inside of the wings for my little lady to put her arms through. One upper arm and one by the wrists.

Then to fit the wing span I made sure I had 7 – dark blue and 6 of each other the other shades of blue. Then after laying out all the feathers (as per the image) with the darkest colours at the bottom. I used the glue gun on the top of each feather to hold it in place. With the odd extra splodge to stop them floating about. The finish off the wings I hemmed the top edge.

Next I cut the ribbons, this depends on the height of the child. I measured the length from the middle of the wings to mid calf length. Then attached them with the trusty glue gun.

The fun part was making the mask… I found this image on pinterest and wanted to adapt it to have a shorter beak and used the left over blue felt. I firstly cut out the big blue base section with two eye holes to fit over the sunglasses. You could also pop out the lenses.

Then I cut out tear drop shapes in different sizes from the felt. Stuck them on with the glue gun and added the spray feathers. For the beak I cut out a big triangle to fit the width of the glasses and then glued two pipe cleaners to the underneath. We then did french plaits for added effect with two pink hair bands.

To finish the look we used some spotty tights we already had, a tulle skirt from a previous costume and a sparkly sequin blue top we also already had.