Yakum and Ikinji’s school is putting on Disney’s Little Mermaid Jr. (I think I got all the required parts in that title…) for their annual musical. Both Yakum and Ikinji decided to participate this year. Of course, this requires parental volunteers to pitch in and do various things, like chaperone at rehearsals, and make sets, props, and costumes. I volunteered to help out with costumes, and selected the octopus costumes.
38, 39, 40.
The woman in charge of costumes had printed several ideas from Pinterest, and the one that was built on a hoodie seemed the easiest. In essence, eight legs hanging from the bottom of the hoodie, with eyes attached to the hood. Simple! Well…until I got creative and saw the Instructable DIY Octopus Costume that gets you curly legs. Bingo! Curly legs attached to the hoodie should look great in the big “Under the Sea” production number, and make for an easy costume change.
So, not actually all that hard. Just tedious. Everyone got in on stuffing the legs (it was a great rainy afternoon activity), but five costumes times eight legs is a lot of legs to sew, stuff, and attach. The fiddliest part was adding the strip of silver fabric (a polyester lining that was on sale at JoAnn’s) at the bottom hem of the hoodie to cover up where the legs all attached. Attaching a woven to a knit is a challenge at
the best of times, let alone when you’re trying to insert eight stuffed legs on top of it.
The eyes are just felt, with the black pupil hot glued on, then sewn on the hood with a little stuffing to make them bulge some. This was the easiest part.
So, forty legs later, and the pod of octopi is done.
A little creepy when they’re all together like this.
Since Ash Wednesday is coming up, I’m sure there’s a hymn parody in there somewhere, but the best I was able to come up with is “These forty legs of octopi/Finally are done!/For kids to dance and sing and play/In this year’s musical”
Quasi Renaissance Man 