I love my son’s faith in my abilities. Less than a month before Halloween he asks me to create an octoling costume. “What, those squid people from the video game Splatoon?” He rolled his eyes. “No, not a SQUID!”
Apparently the squid are the opposite side against the octopus people in the paint gun war planet. He showed me a tiny picture on the screen of his Nintendo Switch. I insisted he draw a picture, since he wanted tentacle hair more like the female character, without it looking squid-like or too feminine. His final design showed 4 tentacles- two in front, two in back.
I wanted stretchy, soft material, so I went through my pile of t-shirt scraps (I’m still working on a t-shirt quilt, about 5 years since I started it) and pulled out a pink shirt to make into a skullcap to hide his real hair. My son rejected all the other old t-shirts we had, saying they were the wrong shade of green. Fortunately, craft stores are having sales on t-shirts right now, I got a large adult t-shirt for 4 bucks (I have material left over for making masks). I made a basic paper pattern for the tentacles, making them curvy. I cut out the shapes, sewed them together, turned them inside-out, and stuffed them. For the suckers I cut out round white felt and sewed a circle in each, pulling the thread and fastening it to make a curved effect, then sewed them on to the tentacles.
Placing and sewing together the tentacles was tricky. I used my son’s plastic pumpkin for a head shape. (Afterward, I went and bought a head, as you see in the photos. I think it will prove useful, though I may need to make it sturdier, since the first thing my son did when he saw it was toss it into the air.) I attached the tentacles together, then sewed them to the skullcap. I tested it out on my son and marked the best spots to attach them to the cap and to each other.
I was nervous that he would be unhappy with the completed hat, but he was ecstatic. “Now we just need the paint canister and the t-shirt and a giant paint roller….”
Sigh.
