Costume Instructions
Prep Time: 10 hours
Costume Materials
I altered the pattern slightly and purchased a cool batik green print with circles on it to resemble the actual frog's skin. Additionally I purchased a contrast dark green solid for the tummy of the frog, the upper feet, and the hood lining. Gold lame was also purchased for the crown and collar, along with paper backed and fusible interfacing, green pompoms for the tips of the toes, gold bells for the tips of the collar, white felt and dark grey embroidery thread for the eyes, a green zipper, and velcro and various sizes of elastic. Instead of purchasing the arm banding for the cuffs, I used an piece of banding from the bottom of a sweatshirt my Mom had cut off for another project.
Costume Instructions
The first step was to wash and dry the fabric (except the lame) and iron and cut out the needed pattern pieces. Then I pinned the pieces on the fabric according to the instructions, and cut them out. From an assembly standpoint, an overview would include attaching the sides of the front and back of the costume, then attaching the tummy (it's appliqued on, so I used a fancy machine stitch to ensure it wouldn't come off). Then I attached the front and back of the suit at the shoulders and sewed on the collar and neck band. While the pattern called for velcro to secure the back, I opted to insert a green zipper as my active toddler would probably bust right through velcro. Then banding for the cuffs of the legs was completed (using elastic), and the sleeves and cuffs were added. The feet were assembled separate from the outfit, first sewing the top to the leg cuff, then making the banding for the ankle, then sewing the top to the bottom. The pompoms at the tips of the toes were hand sewed separately, as were the gold bells on the tip on the collar points. The headpiece I had to make twice - the first time I made the medium sized one as that seemed to be the correct one for my 2T toddler. However, after getting it completely assembled, I had to make the larger sized one (I only included making one headpiece in my time estimate). I attached one side to the middle portion, then the other side. The process was repeated for the hood lining, then the two pieces were sewn together. An elastic band was added by hand at the back of the base of the hood to help gather the material, and velcro tabs were hand sewn on to attach the headpiece underneath the chin. The eyes were made out of a hemicircle of white felt. The instructions with the pattern called for using a magic marker to add the eyes, but instead I chose to hand embroider the eyes on using a satin stitch and then backstitching around the eyes. Once completed, they were stuffed with a little fiberfill and then hand sewn in place. The crown was assembled by attaching the outside to the paper backed fusing and the inside to the interfacing, then ironing the two pieces together. Edges were trimmed, and then it was attached to the top of the hood by hand. As the feet were so much longer than my toddler's (by design) I also used the fiberfill to stuff the tips so they were a little more filled out.
