writ­ten 3/10/2024, updat­ed 3/10/2024

What: A Lunar New Year/Tet, lion danc­ing or lan cos­tume for big­ger dogs

Why: The inter­net is full of these adorable cos­tumes for small dogs, but none what­so­ev­er for big­ger dogs

Sup­plies: Pat­tern Fab­ric, Fab­ric (~2yds of each col­or for a 70lb dog), Fur Trim, Pom­pons, Gimp Trim, Pins, Fiber Fill, Sewing Machine, Scis­sors, Mea­sur­ing Tape, Sharpie, Fab­ric Pen­cils, Thread

Cost: $129.25 in sup­plies, all oth­ers already owned

Com­plex­i­ty: Mod­er­ate

Time: 2 week­ends

Quick Jump

1. Ref­er­ence Images
2. Process
   1. Plan­ning
   2. Choos­ing sup­plies
   3. Wash­ing
   4. Pat­tern Mak­ing
   5. GO TIME
      1. Hood
      2. Body
      3. TAIL
      4. Back Stripe and Faux Fur Trim
      5. Body Accent Trim
      6. Bel­ly Strap
      7. Horn
      8. Eye
      9. Fin­ish­ing Up the Hood
      10. Fine Tun­ing
3. Result

Reference Images

Process

Planning

• Legs - I knew right off the bat that I would not be adding legs to the cos­tume. It would be just a body drape and a strap under the bel­ly to secure it. My dog is not a huge fan of cos­tumes to begin with, and legs would just be too much espe­cial­ly if/when she decides to sit or lay down.
• Vel­cro - would be the best option for any place that need­ed secur­ing
• Head - I also knew ear­ly on that I want­ed the head and the body to be 2 sep­a­rate enti­ties. It could be that a Vel­cro, tie, or but­ton type of sys­tem could be imple­ment­ed to allow for attach­ment, but giv­en how much my dog hates hats, the option to just remove it was para­mount for her. It could have been sewn on as a hood, but I just pre­fer the idea of it remov­able. Bonus, as it leaves room for a col­lar
• Chest — There’s the option here to either have it Vel­cro or to just sew it closed. I decid­ed to sew it closed
• Ears — If you’ve put a cos­tume on any dog, you’ll know that they hate hav­ing their ears cov­ered. Total­ly under­stand­able. I want­ed to incor­po­rate that into the cos­tume and decid­ed to use the cos­tume’s eyes as ear holes
• Mouth — Both for the cos­tume and the dog. The cos­tume would have been more com­plete and more obvi­ous had I added an attach­ment area for the low­er jaw of the lion! How­ev­er, I opt­ed not to for my dog’s com­fort and the like­ly chance she’d chew on it. Much more com­fort­able that way
• There are sev­er­al things to con­sid­er when sewing: when do you want the thread to show? Can you hide it? If not, then you always have to decide which side is to be sewn on to give the best look on the out­ward side

Choosing supplies

What col­or scheme do you want? Lions for Lunar New Year come in a vari­ety of col­ors!

• I opt­ed for a tra­di­tion­al red (with gold flakes!) and lat­er on added they yel­low for con­trast giv­en the col­or of my dog
• Mea­sure your pup with a mea­sur­ing tape (treats or toys are help­ful) to fig­ure out how many yards of fab­ric you will need of each col­or. If you have a wig­gle mon­ster like me, then just go real­ly fast! You can always cut more of it off and fine tune it lat­er.
• My 70lb dog has an odd body shape and I bought about 2 yards of each fab­ric col­or just in case

Ques­tion to ask your­self: how do you want to fin­ish it? Bias tape the edges? Make it dou­ble lay­ered with an out­side and under­side? Just sew the edges? That will fac­tor into what you need to buy

• You’ll need your thread col­or to match the fab­ric unless you want con­trast­ing stitch­ing

Trim - if using, how do you want it to look?

• I used this longer fur trim for the body and it was­n’t until I got it that I found it was­n’t fur at all… They were feath­ers. FEATHERS. The look is good, but feath­ers are fas­tened to the rib­bon tape by adhe­sive which is a mas­sive night­mare to work with.
• If I had to do it again, I’d make sure to choose faux FUR. On the oth­er side of it, the faux fur I was able to find for the head, was rather dif­fi­cult to sew in because the sewn rib­bon edge was very thin and I’d have to fight the fur to sew it. At least there was no adhe­sive, though.
• The Chi­nese gold gimp I used would have been cheap­er from the fab­ric store, except they were out of stock. If I were to do it again, I’d choose a wider width than that ⁵⁄₁₆″ I got

Washing

Fol­low­ing the instruc­tions for your fab­ric, wash it first! The fab­ric will often end up shrink­ing a lit­tle if you’re using cot­ton. This way if you wash your cos­tume lat­er after mak­ing it (grant­ed you don’t use that feath­er trim), there’s less a chance of it shrink­ing then

Pattern Making

I’ve made cos­tumes for dogs in the past, but this time I was armed with pat­tern fab­ric. Total­ly worth the expense! I used to use news­pa­per, paper, even pee pads to try and have it drape bet­ter over the dog. Pat­tern fab­ric, ftw!

Test­ing the cutout… Used pins in the front. Be care­ful not to stick your dog!

Because I only want to do this project one time, I made it more com­pli­cat­ed for myself by cut­ting and sewing things 2x in the begin­ning. I uti­lized a test set from junk fab­ric, before cut­ting the real thing from the expen­sive fab­ric. That allowed me to fine tune the pat­terns in a way that I would­n’t be wast­ing final prod­uct mate­ri­als. It does take more time, but I found it to be worth­while in the begin­ning until I got back into the groove (had­n’t sewn any­thing in 6 years!)

Test pieces for the Hood, the Horn, and the Eye

GO TIME

Hood

In sewing, you sew inside out to hide the thread. Trace, cut, test on dog, pin seam, and then turn inside out to test again until hap­py

Using a Fiskar detail knife on a self-heal­ing mat to cut out the ear holes, stop­ping at the marked lines

Body

At some point, you just have to go for it and hope for the best. In the begin­ning, I was only plan­ning on doing a plain red with white fur trim cos­tume, but then end­ed up decid­ing on adding the yel­low con­trast. Lion Dance cos­tumes usu­al­ly see a wavy fur trim, and I puz­zled for a half a day on how to do it. After con­sult­ing two peo­ple with much more expe­ri­ence, it turns out that the tech­nique of bast­ing would be what I’d have to do to achieve that look. That also meant MORE fab­ric and trim than I’d antic­i­pat­ed because the waves will add more sur­face area.

Result of spend­ing the time to elon­gate the yel­low accent pieces and cut­ting so the waves would fit well on the body piece

Then, after mulling it over dur­ing the work week, I decid­ed NOT to include the wavy look. Why? One, and main­ly, because of the extra mate­r­i­al: The hor­ri­ble feath­er trim I’d bought were already so very expen­sive, and I real­ly did­n’t want to buy any­more and already was not look­ing for­ward to sewing it in. Two, bast­ing is not some­thing I’m famil­iar with at all, and giv­en the last-minute start to this project, there was a high like­li­hood I’d not be able to com­plete it on time for the Lunar New Year.

Turns out, it was a good thing I did­n’t incor­po­rate the waves because though I knew I’d have trou­ble, I nev­er antic­i­pat­ed the extent of the trou­ble I’d have with that feath­er trim.

Dry fit­ting the pieces. The right image shows the feath­er trim

At this point, I end­ed up order­ing a true faux fur trim with a sewing strip attached to it. There was an option for fur trim rib­bon (think edge trim­ming for San­ta Claus cos­tumes), but that’s not what I want­ed

TAIL

Doing the tail got me my first real taste of using the feath­er trim. It was­n’t too bad at first: I start­ed it inside out which was a lit­tle tricky giv­en the sand­wich­ing of the feath­er trim. Then flipped it out, sewed in the edges, and then added the gimp (bad­ly) on top. It’s basi­cal­ly a nice tri­al run involv­ing the main mate­ri­als for the body, allow­ing the user to get used to work­ing the mate­r­i­al, and not mat­ter­ing as much how it looks. No one real­ly looks at the tail.

If I had to do it again, I think I’d make the tail small­er.

Back Stripe and Faux Fur Trim

Now to sew on the design for the back of the beast and attach the tail after­wards!

The dog­gone fur was hard to force aside to sew prop­er­ly. I had to spritz it with water and use a comb to try and keep the fuzz out of the way of the nee­dle. Still man­aged to clog the bob­bin any­ways. Notice in the right­most image that I had the pin on the wrong side, mak­ing it hard­er to pull out while sewing. Doable, just hard­er

Faux fur trim sewn! Stitch lines on top because I could­n’t fig­ure out how to do this one inside out, and then adding the gimp trim for dec­o­ra­tion but also to try and hide the stitch­es. This is why I would have opt­ed for a wider gimp than the ⁵⁄₁₆″!

Body Accent Trim

The yel­low accent trim is held onto the body by a line of sewn thread. It is able to flap around and there­fore moves with the dog’s move­ments. Sewn into the unat­tached side of the accent strips are the feath­er trim and the gold gimp

There’s a lot of mea­sur­ing and mark­ing (fab­ric pen­cils and sewing gauge rulers!) to be done to ensure an even place­ment of trim on the strip. Attach­ing the gold gimp on top of the feath­er trim was even MORE frus­trat­ing than just sewing the feath­ers in because you have to go through the increased thick­ness of both mate­ri­als while pow­er­ing through the adhe­sive two times in a row.

Goo Gone is your friend. I applied it at reg­u­lar inter­vals to the gunky nee­dle (also make sure your sewing machine set­tings and nee­dle are set up for heav­ier mate­r­i­al. Man­aged to break the uni­ver­sal nee­dle and had to swap for a thick one), and need­ed to undo the bob­bin thingy and Goo Gone that, too.

Once done with the trim on the yel­low accent, then it’s time to attach it to the body fab­ric! No pres­sure now! Mea­sure twice, cut once! Mea­sure and pin the yel­low accent, then sew that bad boy!

Left: Lay­ing it dry; Cen­ter: Pin­ning. Note the upside down accent; Right: SEW AWAY. At least it’s just fab­ric this time

This is a close­up of the zigzag stitch I used through­out the cos­tume to close up the all stitch­ing ends. I real­ized after a few fit­tings that my dog is a dog and will shake and run and jump, so not only would the zigzag stitch be strong, but it end­ed up being the only way to seal the gold gimp to pre­vent it from fray­ing and com­ing apart at the ends

After much frus­tra­tion and headaches, here is the fin­ished body!

Belly Strap

Mea­sure out the length need­ed for your bel­ly strap and where you want to place it on your dog. Choose the Vel­cro you want, too. Adhe­sive Vel­cro is not advised. You sew direct­ly on top of the Vel­cro itself to secure it

WARNING: Make sure you under­stand how to posi­tion the Vel­cro before sewing it in! I messed up and had to undo one side because I acci­den­tal­ly posi­tioned one on the inside. The pic­tures shown are the cor­rect way to ori­ent them on the straps.

Sew the dou­ble-lay­ered straps (two-sided to look pret­ty and give some strength), and then secure the Vel­cro! I used a square pat­tern with zigza­gs on the ends for the loop side, and then an X‑pattern on the hook side

Horn

This is pret­ty straight­for­ward. Just cut out the shape, dou­ble up in the fab­ric, sew the edges, leav­ing the bot­tom open for poly/fiber fill, and turn it inside out! A chop­stick is a won­der­ful tool for both stuff­ing and forc­ing the tip of the horn out

Eye

This part requires a lit­tle bit of draw­ing. Cut out the cir­cle for the eyes on both black and white pieces. Then on the black pieces, draw (white or yel­low fab­ric pen­cil) and then cut out the eye design. The black will go on the white.

LEFT: I cut all 4 pieces at one time; MIDDLE: Fold­ed the black in half to make cut­ting eas­i­er; RIGHT: Cut design on white

Here, you can adhere it how you’d like. I end­ed up just sewing on the out­er ring to the hood fab­ric togeth­er with the faux fur trim and for­get­ting com­plete­ly about the rest of the eye. Plus, I did­n’t have any prop­er fab­ric adhe­sive, plan­ning to go back lat­er and do it, but I nev­er did.

This is a close­up at the faux fur trim I used. It has a rib­bon in the mid­dle to sew onto things. It was nice, but a lit­tle tricky to do. Here I sand­wiched the trim rib­bon between the eye fab­ric and the hood fab­ric with black thread

Finishing Up the Hood

After the eye, the only things left are the horn, the rest of the faux fur trim, head secure­ment, then the pom­pons for the nose

An una­mused mod­el (I think it was like 11pm), Messy machine and hand stitch­ing of the filled horn to the hood

Attach the trim to the rest of the head, test on the dog, and then secure the hood ties (Vel­cro here)

After that, hand sew col­ored pom­pons for the nose and oth­er face accents (I added a line of gold gimp to the cen­ter of the back up to the horn), then BOOM! You’re DONEDONEONE!

Fine Tuning

Now, what I ran out of time to do and meant to go back to do was fine tune the cos­tume. Adhere the eye down, clean up the edges. Fig­ure out how to attach the hood to the body. I would use bias tape made from the same fab­ric to seal the edges. I’d use ties to con­nect the head and body togeth­er. I’d con­sid­er a jaw for the head. Hand-sew a few incon­sis­tent lines to straight­en them out. How­ev­er, I did­n’t do any­thing! No one real­ly noticed or cared except for me, so I guess it was okay.

Result

The cos­tume was a hit at the Lunar New Year event. My dog did­n’t mind wear­ing it, and both my niece and my nephew fought over their chance to don it. No rips! Suc­cess all the way around! I don’t regret not adding waves to the fur at all giv­en the feath­er mate­r­i­al (which kept los­ing feath­ers), and def­i­nite­ly would not rec­om­mend using it for a cos­tume like this. If I was using a true faux fur trim, I would try to make it wavy.

My absolute favorite part of this cos­tume and the part I’m most proud of is the ear holes! It’s so cute and the biggest rea­son my dog was­n’t too both­ered by the hood!

Hap­py sewing!