Flying Chameleon Costume

My son has some very unusal costume ideas.  Last year he wanted to be a flying chameleon.  Not a dragon, not just a regular chameleon, but are flying chameleon.   I  started with the basic idea for the dragon costume on Michaels.com.  

We bought  a green T shirt that was a couple sizes larger than my son normally wears.  Because he wanted a red belly and a green back side,  I bought felt in both colors. (about a 1/2 to 1 yd each)   To make the scales, cut several trianges to the size scale you prefer.  Using a hot glue gun, I layered the scales onto the T shirt row by row.


 

We had not found his green sweats at the store yet, so I had him try on the the T shirt over a red sweatshirt.  He wasnt too happy with me when I said it looked more like a parrot at that point.  This idea could easily be changed into a parrot if depending on the color scales you make. 

To make the tail, I cut a long piece of felt (2 yards long) and then sewed a seam on one side. I then turned the tube inside out so that he seam was in the tuble. I stuff it the tube with plastic bags (you can also use fiberfill) to give it some shape. I rolled it into a coil and then held it in place with some stitches. I probably should have added more because Kyle "flew" so much his tail came undone.

I stuffed the tail lightly with plastic bags. I did not want to make it too full, because it had to be able to roll. 

Once the tail was rolled and stitched together, I sewed it to the waistband of his sweatpants. 

To make the wings, I gave Kyle a piece a paper to sketch what he wanted the shape to look like. I then cut out two layers, one green and one red. You could possible glue the two layers together but to make sure they stayed intact, I quickly sewed a seam around the edge. Once made, I attached the wings to this sholders and added a small loop on the underside for him to hold onto.
 

I added felt eyes onto the hood of his green sweatshirt.  In this picture you can see the red belly scales and the green back scales.  One thing great about this costume is that if the T shirt is big enough, you can layer your child easily to keep them warm if you have a chilly Halloween night.  Last Halloween where  we live was COLD.

Kyle winning his grand prize.  His mouth looks funny, because he felt that his flying chameleon needed to have fangs.  I think he wore them for only about 30 mins, and then he was done.