Unicorn costume for a girl - second go

Vaulting a tall horn on the front of a girl's head is no easy task. Although the red hair that I used that night for the next day school dress up did look a little clownlike - I think that the solution we found for the horn was excellent.

In the end, for my second go, I used the resource of balloon holder cup and a chopstick, as the horn had to be very light. (My first horn used a single cigar tin but it ended up heavy, and unwieldy.) Shane helped me with his engineering skills - and constructed the horn's support (2 lengths of waistband elastic sewed together to be double wide.) This costume was fashioned after Star, from the book The Baby Unicorn (by Jean and Claude Marzollo, illustrated by RJ Blake). This was also the reason for using orangey-red cloth for the hair.






Here are the steps - I am definitely not bothering to re-draw them in Illustrator, here are a few scanned sketches for anyone interested to understand the idea:

STEP 1
THE HORN: Balloon cup holder plus stick (balloon stick chopstick any stick). Then you cello tape card or thin cardboard around it to make a light sheath.
STEP 2
Tape the cardboard round and round with clear tape.
STEP 3
Then you handsew a layer of pretty cloth around it, which gives it structure - but more importantly the ability to sew it to a base.
STEP 4
Make an elastic headband to mount the horn on. It helps to make the location where the horn will go double wide creating a rectangle - we used elastic waistband which worked very well. STEP 5
THE HOODIE: Before you sew the horn on its mounting to the hoodie, sew some hair onto the hoodie. I sewed some non-frayable material, cut in wide strips almost to the end. Once I had sewed along the hood's seam with a sewing machine (definitely use one if you can or this part would be laborious), I then cut the strips into many far narrower ones.
STEP 6
After the horn is mounted on the band -- sew it to the base by hand, make it strong -- put it on the child, as well as the hoodie. This way you'll be able to see where the horn should come through the hoodie. Then cut a hole and stick the horn through. STEP 7
After you take the horn and hoodie off, you can sew the widened band to the underside hoodie, giving it a wide surface area to support that horn. (You can cut off the extra straps that extend past the widened part, you won't need them anymore).
STEP 8
Handsew on ears of your choice (I looked at a real horse image to see how their ears are placed first.) Then you are done!