What Does the Fox Say? Fox Mask and Tail Tutorial

Today we are lucky enough to have a guest post by my amazing sister-in-law, Lauren! She has a blog and an amazing etsy shop, where she sells handmade baby shoes, clothing, and kids toys.  No idea how she gets everything done that she does, including this adorable tutorial for a Fox Costume.  Easy on and off for dress up, or just dress your little one in all brown (or orange!) with this costume for a perfect Halloween get-up!  Now on to the post!

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Hi there!

I'm Lauren from Cowboy and City Girl. I'm super excited to be part of this great mini series, and hope you'll forgive me if my pictures and  instructions are a bit sub-par...this is the first time I've done a tutorial! So hang on for the ride, and hopefully you can figure out what I'm trying to say. :)

With all the super cute girlie dress-ups out there, I really wanted to make something that a boy (or girl) could enjoy, and although my little Champ likes to dress up as super-heroes and cartoon characters as much as the next boy, he and his sister also love to pretend that they are different animals. So for this tutorial I thought I'd share our family's fox dress up. We (or should I say, "I") especially love this dress up because the littles can get it on all by themselves. There are no strings to tie, or Velcro to close.



Fox Tail and Mask How-to

I really liked the look of this reddish brown felt that I had, but my 5 year old was quick to let me know that foxes are ORANGE AND WHITE, not brown and cream. You can choose either color combination, and it would look adorable. In the instructions I'll use brown and cream.

Materials:

• Printed Pattern. Fox mask. Fox Tail.
• 1/4 yard orange/brown felt (or 3 sheets)
• 1/4 yard of white/cream felt (or 2 sheets)
• Scrap of black felt for the nose
• Glue for felt (optional)
• 13 inches of 1/4 elastic
• Enough 1 inch elastic to go around your child's waist
• Plastic grocery sacks, garbage bags, news paper or batting for stuffing tail
• Sewing machine and other sewing supplies

Instructions:

1.  Click on links above to print out pattern pieces.

Printing Instructions/Tips:
- Click on the links above, save the images to your own computer.
- Open the files in your computer and click Print.
- Make sure that you do not scale the images at all.  On a Mac: click "Fill Entire Paper", on Windows: look in the settings and make sure you click "Actual size" instead of "Scale to Fit".
- To test if your patterns printed properly, measure the widest part of the fox tail pattern, it should be 6 1/2"

Cut out all pattern pieces as stated on pattern.  For the brown part of the tail cut a rectangle 6 1/2 inches wide and 10 inches long. Once you have two rectangles cut, taper one end of the brown tail piece so that it's slightly smaller at one side than the other. (refer to picture below)



2.  Using your felt glue (I like to use Fabri-Tac), attach the cream pieces to one side of your mask. Be sure to keep the glue away from the edges, since you'll be sewing around the edges. You could also just pin them in place, and sew around them, but I think the glue option is nice because it also adds a touch of stability. (I glued on the black nose here, but you should wait until step 5.)



3.  Topstitch (sew about 1/8" from the edge) around the cream edges of your mask.
4.  Stack brown mask pieces together, sandwiching the 1/4" elastic in between. Sew around the mask, and around the eye openings, being careful to only catch the elastic in on the two sides of the face.
5.  Glue on black nose.

(Note: It's also possible to skip almost all of the sewing, and simply glue all the pieces on, and together, but you'd need to sew the elastic on to the back of the mask in order to keep it securely attached. This could even be done by hand.)



6.  Sew the cream tail piece to the wide side of the brown tail piece. Repeat with remaining pieces.
7.  With tail pieces on top of each other, sew around the outside edge, leaving the top, narrow brown section open.



8.  Stuff tail with garbage bags, grocery sacks, news paper, or batting. (I used grocery sacks for mine.)
9.  Sew 1 inch elastic in a circle. (Measure your little one's waist, with clothes on, to determine how big your circle needs to be. Make it the same size as their waist, for easy on and off over clothing.)



10.  Pin the tail to the elastic, and zig-zag stich across the top, closing the top and attaching tail to elastic.

Let your little fox run wild!