I am always looking for easy, non-expensive costumes for my dog. My girls LOVE taking our dog with us when we go trick-or-treating. I also usually wait at the bus stop on Halloween afternoon with her in costume and all the kids on the bus get so excited to see her dressed up. Last year she was a Jelly Bean, before that she had been a strawberry and a pumpkin. This year she will have a Harry Potter dog costume!
My 8 year old decided to be Hermione Granger for Halloween this year. I was so excited for her to embrace the Harry Potter series – I loved reading the books when I was younger. So naturally, our dog just had to be a Harry Pottery character. The problem was that I could hardly find anything online and if I did, it was too expensive for a dog costume IMHO. That’s why I decided to make one for her! This costume cost me a grand total of $2!
This costume is a NO-SEW costume which makes it easy and quick to make. You need felt in the correct colors for whatever house you want your dog to be in, (Gryffindor: Scarlet and Gold, Ravenclaw: Blue and Bronze, Slytherin: Green and Silver, Hufflepuff: Yellow and Black) hot glue and a scissors. That’s it! I wanted our dog to match my daughter, so she is officially in Gryffindor House. I bought black for the robe, white for her collar, and yellow and red for the tie and scarf.
I bought the felt in two sizes, the larger piece in black was just about right for the size of my dog. It was 12 inches x 18 inches. My dog is a Boston Terrier Pug mix, so she is relatively small and I didn’t want the robe to be dragging on the ground. If you have a larger dog, you may need to go to a fabric store and get a yard of black for the robe, then cut to fit. The red, yellow and white are all half the size of the black, 12 inches x 9 inches. Again, if you have a large dog, you may need larger sizes of colored felt. I got all of my felt at Michael’s.
Harry Potter Style Robe
First, you will need a rectangle or square of the black felt for the robe. I wanted to round the neck area out, so I cut a curved piece out of one of the long sides of the black felt. (See picture above for cut – I enlisted a helper with this step, the kids loved being involved in this project.) I then cut the white felt into three equal pieces, I only needed two for the collar. I laid them on an angle under the curved collar area, glued the to the underside of the black felt then folded them over and glued them to the top side. See pictures below.
Gryffindor Tie
Next, I made the tie. I cut out a tie shape of red felt in a length that wouldn’t hit the ground when my dog walked. I cut equally wide strips of yellow felt to make the stripes, glued them down with hot glue, then trimmed the excess.
DIY Gryffindor Scarf
Next was the scarf. I cut the yellow felt into two equal strips and laid them end to end to make the scarf long enough. Again, you’ll need to make the scarf bigger or smaller depending on how large your dog is. I then cut equal sized rectangles for the stripes on my scarf and glued them down to the yellow. Finally, I cut some fringe at each end of the scarf as you’ll see in the pictures.
At this point, all the separate pieces are done, now you can decide how you want to attach them. I hot glued the tie to one side of the neck of the robe. You could use a piece of velcro beneath that with the matching piece of velcro on the other side of the neck. I chose to just glue the tie to both sides of the robe so my costume just slides over my dogs head.
Options:
- You can cut a small slit along the back of the robe if you use a harness with your dog. Just put your dogs harness on first, then the costume over it to measure where to cut.
- You can choose to glue the scarf to the back of the robe if you don’t want it to slip off as your dog walks. That is what I did.
- You can make a pair of Harry Potter glasses out of a few black pipe cleaners. I made two small circles out of pipe cleaners, then I twisted a small piece between the two circles as the bridge for the nose and to hold the circles together. Then I made a long loop instead of standard earpieces on glasses by twisting two pipe cleaners together and to the ends to each of the circles. My dog did not love the glasses and they are just for pictures. She doesn’t have much of a snout so the glasses didn’t want to stay up on her head.
Have fun – Happy Halloween, everyone!
Materials List:
Below I have affiliate links to all the materials I used in this post. I didn’t have to purchase anything but the felt making this project just $2!
Colored Felt for tie and collar – Get at Michael’s
Black Felt – Get at Michael’s
Glue Gun – Get it at Michael’s or Amazon
Glue for glue gun – Get at Michael’s or Amazon
Self-Healing Cutting Mat – Get at Michael’s or Amazon
Today I need a... 
AWWW so darling!!! and easy. Wish I had a dog.
LikeLike