Two friends and I volunteered to make some animal costumes for the annual Epiphany Pageant at our church performed by children ranging from ages 3 to 5. These needed to be simple costumes that would fit a variety of heights and weights and be simple enough that the kids could slip them on and off by themselves. We worked on the sheep. Here’s how we cranked out 10 sheep costumes in a day.

I went to two different fabric stores to look for berber fleece or any other kind of sheep-like material. Our community is proud of its racial and ethnic diversity so we decided that the sheep shouldn’t all look the same. As a result I decided to buy as many different, sheep-colored types of fleece as I could find.

We made muslin patterns of a vest we chalked by sight, which we later tested on my daughter who is 5 (that adorable girl shown above). She would be the largest possible user. Someone else had a generic animal hood pattern which we made a muslin of as well. We tested the hood as well before we cut out the rest. With the costumes so simple I thought it really important to get the details right.

Being a city dweller I decided to Google images of sheep to look at the placement of the sheep’s ears. When you stop laughing at this you will acknowledge that the placement of the sheep’s ears really is critical to making them look convincing. I noticed that the location of the ears should be just above the line that would be made if you connected the eyes. If I had put the ears on top, the costume would have looked like a dog. The hard-core designer in me decided that the ears needed to be flesh-colored on the interior, so I combed my solids for the perfect shade of fleshy pink. This small detail really makes the whole costume I think. All I have to do now is sew some velcro tabs for the chin strap.

When working with furs of any type use the overlock stitch on your machine on all seams. If your machine doesn’t have overlock, use a wide zigzag. If the fur begins to shed as soon as you cut it, overlock or zigzag all raw edges before you sew the pieces together. Give them a good shake outside before you put them on the child to get rid of any loose fur. If time had not been so much of an issue or if these costumes were going to get more than 1 hour of wear a year, I would have lined them. The most important thing is that the children are comfortable. On the day of the pageant I was heartened to see one little boy stroking his costume over and over again because it felt so good.

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