GAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! (DIY Chewbacca Costume)

Our house, September

7:30 am:
– Sweetie it is time to get out of bed
– GAAAAAAAAAAAH!
– No, really, you have used up your snoozes, time to get up!
– GAAH!

4:30 pm:
– How was school? Did the spelling quiz go OK?
– GAAAAAH!
– Great! I’m glad you liked recess, but what about the quiz?
– GAAAH!

6:30 pm:
– GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
– Hey buddy! There is NO hitting your sister! Honey, why did he hit you?
– GAAAAH! GAAAAH!
– gaaaaah! gaaaaaah! gaaaaaaaaah!
– You! No stealing you brother’s lightsaber. You! no hitting!

9:30 pm:
– GAAAAAAH!
– I love you too! Good night!

(in case you don’t watch movies with the subtitles on – GAAAAAH! is how they transcribe all of Chewie’s dialogue for the subtitles)

My daughter wanted to be Chewie for Halloween. And she really got in to it. (Actually, we all did!) We had a so much fur flying around the house, one would think a walking carpet had moved in. No matter how much vacuuming we did, for a month, we had little pieces of wookie fur stuck to everything.

Need:

Wookie Fur
Thin Knitted Gloves
Safety Pins
Elastic
Wig
Hair Spray
Face Paint
Vampire Teeth
Really Good Scissors
Sewing Machine
Pins and Sewing Needle
Vacuum
Leaf Blower

Go to “Get Supplies” at the bottom of the post to get buying suggestions!

How To:

Tips:

I tend to not use real patterns for our costumes. Not that I am great as sewing or anything, I just prefer to dive right in. So I used a large sweater and sweat pants as patterns this time around. I added extra width, so we could fit her winter clothes underneath if Halloween got really cold (which it did! It snowed! We took these pictures the weekend before). I added even more in length, to be hidden in the hem, in case the kids want to use the costume when they are bigger. (which is also why we settled on a 2 piece option – more room for growth)

IMPORTANT: The first thing you HAVE to do is to take the fur outside, and blow it with your leaf blower! Not kidding! Shaking it will not do! I didn’t have this brilliant idea until about halfway through the process and it made a HUGE difference in the amount of wookie fur we found in our dinners.

Some furs have a grain, make sure you get all the fur to go the correct direction

When you cut, make sure you cut from the back side, so you do not cut the hairs. Also, as soon as you do cut, pull all the loose fur off the edges. Then go outside and shake the piece.

After you sew a seam, gently pull any fur our that has gotten stuck in the seam.

Be carefully if you use pins, they will totally disappear into fur!

Click here to get instructions on how to make the Bandolier and Bag.

Shirt:

The top is simply 2 rectangular pieces with slight oval cut for the head, and 2 straight tubes for arms (with only 1 seam, and the top edge cut at a slight angle) I started by sewing the shoulders, then the sides, last the sleeves. I ended up cutting a slit in the back of the head hole to get head through. (just used a safety pin to close that up later). The sleeves and bottom hems were done by hand.

Pants:

Each pant leg is just 1 piece (inseam only), slightly shaped for the groin and waist areas. Sew each pant leg, then sew the 2 legs together in the groin area, and hem by hand. Easy! I didn’t worry about the waist at all. We just put elastic at the top, like a pair of suspenders. ‘Worked like a charm.

Gloves:

This was the trickiest part to figure out. It was just pure luck that I had a pair of gloves that matched in color – I could not find anything at the stores. We traced the gloves, cut sleeves for them, and sewed the fur on (by hand) all around the wrists and just the outside of the fingers. Looked great.

Feet:

I decided against using fur on the feet. Since it would be used outside, the feet would just get muddy. So we settled on an old pair of cowboy boots.

Neck:

I cut a simple dickie, just safety-pinned in the back, and tucked under the shirt.

Face:

This was the hardest for me. I hand’t done any real face painting before, and I just could’t seem to get the hang of it. Once I did, I could not get the paint to dry (Yup, I waited between colors). So many of the photos have the face paint all smeared. Better luck next time!

Hair:

We lucked out and found a wig at a local pharmacy that matched perfectly. We used a lot of hair spray to get it to keep its form. Looking back, I probably should have given it a bit of a trim. The original plan was to make a hood, but I think this worked much better.