Mermaid Costume

My seven year old, S, is obsessed with mermaids. She loves the show "H2O" and watches it frequently. When she swims, she tries to swim like a mermaid. When she bathes, she pretends to be a mermaid. She desperately wants to BE a mermaid.

For Christmas this year, I decided to make her a mermaid costume that I'd seen online.

It was going to be a little tricky, because I wanted it to be a surprise.  I bought a monofin from amazon. I bought 3 yards of swimsuit fabric at the store. I want to make a matching swimming suit to go with it. I borrowed an old one piece pattern from my mom, but I'm thinking I'd like to have it be a tankini. But, I'll admit that 3 yards was definitely overkill on fabric, so I could easily make 4 or 5 swimming suits with the leftover fabric.

Then, I got a large piece of butcher paper, and told S that I was going to trace her body on the paper so she could make a life sized mermaid version of herself to color as a fun activity. She thought it was a great idea, and had a blast making her mermaid.  She made her mermaid, cut it out and decorated it.

When she was distracted with other things, I measured her waist and cut out an elastic waistband from that. She was busy coloring her mermaid tail, so she didn't really even think about what I was measuring her waist for and why.

After she went to bed, I folded the bottom fin up, since I'd just guessed how that would be shaped. Then, I laid the monofin and the mermaid paper on my fabric, and cut it out like the directions. I used a sharpie, and drew about an inch bigger than the paper, and a little bit less on the thinner part of the fin.













Sewing it up was surprisingly fast- I had it sewn within 10 minutes. 

 Christmas morning came, and I was so excited to see her reaction.  She was just as thrilled as I'd hoped she would be. She can't wait to go swimming while wearing the fin. I plan to be right by her side because the mermaid swimming can be kind of tricky, and frankly, I am not sure she'll actually want to do much swimming with it on. For now thought, it's been a lot of fun for her.