Four years ago when my son wanted to be Jake from the Never Land Pirates and Disney did not sell it yet, I felt panicked. I was super worried that if I made it he would be the kid in the costume that looked like he made it himself or was completely unrecognizable. But thanks to the Internet and some hot glue, I came up with this costume that he was happy with. Then of course he picked impossible costumes the following years and this year was no exception.

But, this was the first year I did not panic when he asked to be Peso Penguin from the Octonauts. I first checked the Disney store and Google to make sure we could not buy it, and then took a deep breath and thought about what I already knew how to do. From his dolphin costume I knew I could make a hood and since Peso is all black with a white belly, it struck me that I might be able to make something adorable. He just turned seven so this might be the last year for adorable so I wanted it to count.

I remembered I had iron on paper left over from when I made this shirt and decided I could put a patch on the white chest and iron the symbol on the hat to make it easy. I was not sure how many people would recognize Peso Penguin and thought the patch would help.

When all was said and done, we had a cute Peso penguin with not a lot of effort. The hood was the hardest part and as always with my projects I realized I did more than I needed to. If you forget about the widow’s peak part of the hood I think it will be much easier and still be identifiable because of the hat.

MATERIALS:

• • 1/2 yard black fabric
  • 1/2 yard white felt
  • 1/4 yard light blue felt (even less if they will sell it to you smaller)
  • iron on paper
  • Any black shirt and black pants or sweats
  • Batting- I used this one Warm Blend Cotton/Poly Batting Craft
  • Peso medic bag (optional, we had these goody boxes leftover from his birthday party)

DOWNLOADS:

I found a picture of a hat and put it in photo shop to resize it and take out the color so as not to use too much ink from my printer for a pattern. Here are the hat, patch, and symbol patterns I used for the for the costume:

1. Hat
2. Peso Patch
3. Symbol

I inserted the patterns into word and printed them on scratch paper first to see how I wanted the sizes.

TO MAKE THE HAT:

I wanted the hat to have the look of two pieces so I printed the pattern twice. I cut the bottom rim piece from one of the patterns, and the top part with the symbol from the other pattern, leaving the top piece longer like this:

Once I had the two pieces, I traced it on to felt (two times one for the front and one for the back). I chose to round the corners a little with the scissors and made the hat a little smaller. I added the iron on symbol first before gluing the two pieces together. My iron on paper was easy to use–just print on the paper, remove the back layer and iron away. I used this iron on paper from Transfermations (Michaels sells it and you can use their 40% off coupon), but I also think you could trace this onto a darker felt and hot glue if you want to avoid iron ons.

You should end up with two tops of the hat and two bottoms of the hat. Put the hat pieces together so that you have a front and back. Hot glue your two pieces of the front together and then do the same for the back.

Once I had my two pieces to the hat, I traced the hat onto my batting and cut it out so that there was a little extra space for a seam. I then hot glued the whole hat together with the batting in the middle to add some stiffness and hand stitched around the edges. Lastly, I added a thin strip of a darker blue felt I had still left over from the Jake costume (I way overbought that blue felt!).

And done!

TO MAKE THE PENGUIN HOOD:

Again, I really want to stress that the hood is the most challenging part of the costume because I went for perfectionism! When the whole look was pulled together, I knew that adding in the batting between two hood layers and making the widow’s peak was more work than necessary. If you start with downloading the hood patterns and add more paper to make it the size of you child’s head, you can get away with only one piece of fabric for the hood (just an outside) because the hat made it look the most like Peso (in my opinion). If you do want it to look like it’s pictured, here’s how I did it:

I wish I could say that this part was easy and that I have a great pattern for it. It wasn’t and I don’t! I had such a hard time with the widow’s peak of the penguin head that I finally took the dolphin head patterns 1A, 1B, 2A, and 2B from this tutorial, drew it on gold felt I had on hand, and kept adding pieces and taping them on until it looked right. Here is what my final pattern on the black fabric looked like:

Once I had a hood pattern, I doubled the fabric and lined up the pattern with the back edge of crease of the fold so that I did not have to sew the whole hood (that part was already connected by the fold). I sewed the top part of the hood together, inside out, and then repeated the whole process to make a second, inner hood.

I really wanted the widow’s peak to be firm and the hood to have some padding (batting) so it was round, like Peso. I hot glued some foam board triangles (you could also use a cereal box) to the inner hood and then hot glued one sheet of batting that I traced with the hood pattern to the same size.

Pinning the two pieces of the hood together is the trickiest part. At first this seems a little complicated, so you may want to turn it right side after pinning, before you sew, to make sure you have it pinned correctly. Basically, you will have the inner hood so that the batting is showing and will end up sewed inside. The outside hood should be pinned on so that once it is sewn you will flip it over and the two pieces will be together and the seam will be inside the hood. I used a soccer ball to hold everything in place while I pinned it.

Once the hood is done, the rest is a piece of cake! You can hand stitch the blue hat to the top. I pinned and sewed the hood to the shirt. I sewed right on the outside of the shirt and you could not even see the seam because it is black.

I measured white felt for the body right on the front of the shirt and then ironed on the patch. I thought the patch would be cute on the sleeve but my son was super against it. We compromised on more toward the belly. Sew with white thread right along the edges of the white felt to attach it to the shirt. Again I sewed right on the outside of the fabric and you could not even tell since in this case I used white thread on white felt.

After that you just need your collar. I cut it without a pattern and hot glued the darker blue arrows on it. I hot glued the whole collar to the white felt. Done!

While trying to make this costume, I have to say my boys were so excited for Halloween they were running all over the place. Once I was finished I kept saying this was the last costume I was ever making. But then of course, the day after Halloween my four-year old said that next year he wants to be a hummingbird. Immediately I could picture using the same hood pattern to make it and saw myself hot gluing different green felts for the wings. My costume making days may continue…

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