Last year was the first year that my little girl had a definite opinion of what she wanted to be for Halloween. She wanted to be Strawberry Shortcake and it was my job to make it happen.

Today, I’ll give you an idea of how I pieced together this Strawberry Shortcake costume with some already made items, and a little creativity.

I have to say I’m not a huge fan of store bought costumes, especially for little girls.

One of my favorite memories as a kid was my mom making my costume, or at least semi homemaking it. She always came up with some of the most creative costumes that you would never be able to find in the store.

Now that I have kids, I really enjoy doing their costumes. I’m not very good at sewing clothing, so I almost always opt for a semi homemade costume.

With a simple Google search, I was on my way to making my little lady into Strawberry Shortcake!

I made the hat with hair and the t-shirt. Everything else I found in her closet or borrowed from a friend.

The Strawberry Shortcake Hat

My mom had this hat from her first job at Burger King….hahaha. I used it as a guide for the hat I wanted to make.

To make the bill of the Strawberry Shortcake hat, I traced the bill of this hat onto a piece of cardboard and cut it out. This will serve as the structure to the bill of the hat.

Then I cut 2 pieces of green fabric a little larger than my cardboard bill and sewed it together on the rounded edge. I inserted the cardboard and set it aside.

When deciding on how big to make the hat, measure the kiddo’s head and then add a couple inches because the yarn hair will take up a little bit of space.

For the top part of the hat, I cut 4 triangles with rounded bottoms from the pink fabric, and sewed the edges together until I had a sort of circle.

Then I sewed the bill to one side of my pink circle and finished off the rest of the edge with some green bias tape to make a band. I used a safety pin to adjust to the size of my daughters head when she wore it.

How to make the hair for a Strawberry Shortcake costume

I wanted my daughter to be able to take the hair off if she wanted to. Do you remember being a kid and having your head itch like crazy on Halloween?

But, I wanted people to be able to tell what she was even if she didn’t have the hair on. So I came up with a way to easily remove the hair, and have it not be so much hair that her head would get all hot and itchy.

I had this felt headband that had reindeer antlers on it from the dollar bin at target. (You can easily make one with a band of fabric or felt and a little piece of velcro.)  I cut off the antlers and used it as the structure for a yarn wig.

First, I gathered yarn by looping it over my hand and letting it hang at the length I wanted Strawberry Shortcake’s hair to be.

Then, I laid it on the felt headband and attached it by sewing it on.

**Be sure to leave a space for your kid’s face to show through. To put on the hair she will simply put this band around her head and then put the hat on!

Strawberry Shortcake dress

My daughter had this long sleeve pink with red polka-dot dress and green and white striped leggings that were a tad bit small, but worked fine.

I bought a white t-shirt at Wal-Mart and painted the green diamonds and strawberry on it with craft paint.

The final touch were the red glittery shoes that I also found at Wal-Mart and they did double duty for Christmas.

She was thrilled! I added some freckles with an eye pencil and a little blush and she was the cutest little Strawberry Shortcake ever!