2018 Update!
I love Halloween, and making Halloween costumes has been such a fun part of the holiday for me – and it seems that way for you guys too! Since first posted in 2014, this post always becomes popular in August, and remains my most read post until Halloween!
Honestly, the photos and details have always gotten me down, as my skill with a camera have gotten a lot better! So I wanted to update the post with a full tutorial (since the original didn’t include instructions) and hopefully anyone coming here from the inter-webs can easily make their own!
Bonus: I’ve made pattern pieces for you to download!
(Print PDF at 100%)
I hope you enjoy this casual Dumbo & Timothy Halloween costume, and if you make your own version – let me know in the comments!
Supplies:
Felt (based off 12″ x 9″ pieces in the craft section)
2 Thick Grey, or 4 Regular Grey
2 Light Pink
1 Brown
1 White
1 Black
4 Red
5 Yellow
Hot Glue Gun & Glue Sticks
2 Headbands – find thicker bands to glue to!
Velcro
Embroidery thread to hand gather
Grey shirt or dress for Dumbo
Red shirt for Timothy
Print out pattern pages and cut pieces from appropriate colors. Extra pieces required:
Timothy’s Hat
3″ x 7.5″ Red
7 1/4″ x 1″ Yellow
Dumbo’s Hat:
9″ x 3″ Yellow
12″ x 9″ Yellow
Dumbo Ruffle:
(4 x) 5″ x 12″ Red
(4x) 1″ x 12″ Yellow
Gluing Tip: be light with your hot glue, there are a lot of seen edges, slow and steady for a clean finish!
Timothy Hat:
Glue 1″ yellow band to bottom of Red felt for hat (3″ x 7.5″) you will have a slight overlap of red. Glue short ends together to form circle.
Glue red top to top of hat, and black bottom to bottom of hat. There will be overhang of black to form the cap.
Glue short end of white “feather” to small yellow piece, then glue yellow piece to center of red cap. Be sure to leave the feather free!
Timothy Ears:
Glue pink centers to brown outer ears, matching bottoms.
Glue finished hat to center of headband. Glue ears, one on each side of the hat.
Timothy Shirt:
Cut yellow pieces of felt, and hand stitch appliques to front. The oval shapes are sewn to shoulder seams.
Dumbo Hat:
Take yellow 9″ x 3″ piece and fold in half lengthwise. Glue. Glue short ends together to form hat bottom.
Take full 12″ x 9″ yellow piece and fold in thirds, gluing together. Glue one short end of large piece to bottom of hat bottom.
Folding other end inside the hat bottom, angle free end until you form an angled shape on the top. Cut excess felt off, and glue free end to other side of hat bottom.
Dumbo Ears:
Glue pink centers to grey outer ears, matching ends. I recommend using two layers of grey on each ear as it will stabilize the ears for easier wear. If you can find a thicker grey felt, you’ll only need the single layer on each ear.
Glue ears and hat to headband. Starting with ears, glue one to end of headband, and the other 2″ up from end of headband. Glue hat next to ear. (You may choose to make a hat “bottom” to make gluing easier.)
Dumbo Ruffle:
To make the ruffle, cut 4 pieces 12″ x 5″ Red. Short ends can be glued or stitched together to form one long red piece, around 46″ long.
Cut 4 pieces 12″ x 1″ Yellow. Machine stitch or hand stitch yellow band to bottom of red piece, 1/2″ up.
Using embroidery thread (or gathering stitch on sewing machine), hand stitch along top of red piece until ruffle is gathered. I gathered mine to around 20″. Knot on the end, spreading gathers along ruffle evenly.
Cut pieces of velcro for short ends of ruffle and attach as per the instructions on the packaging.
Your costumes are done! Happy Halloween!
Here for the original post content? Don’t worry, I saved it below!
I need to start this post with a disclaimer: there are NO photos of us in our full costumes. This is for a few reasons. Reason #1 Drew refused to let me take a picture because he thought I would post it all over the internet…so he isn’t completely wrong for thinking that. Reason #2 we didn’t think we were going out until 10 pm, when I was rushing to get into my costume and go out, so all thoughts of taking pictures were lost.
But I hope these pictures are sufficient enough to show off our costumes!
One night last year, walking back to our apartment, the idea of being Dumbo for halloween came to my mind. I thought it would be clever to make Drew Timothy the mouse because he is so much taller than me, him being a mouse would be pretty comical. Drew almost always refuses to dress up for Halloween so I knew our costumes would have to be pretty casual for him to actually wear it.
I made almost all aspects of our costume. Our ears were made out of felt, hot glued to headbands. For my costume, I wanted to make a dress that I could wear after the costume was worn. I took a Cynthia Rowley pattern I made before, and some grey jersey (same as this top) to make a base dress. I made a neck ruffle out of red and yellow felt and used velcro to make it easier to put on and take off.
I made this costume so easy for Drew I’m actually pretty impressed with myself. He had his ears and hat made of felt and I sewed some yellow felt onto a t-shirt. I’m slowly easing him into wearing full on costumes.
Everything came together pretty quick. Felt has a way of making everything look adorable and it’s definitely one of my favorite materials to work with. We had a good night and people knew who we were so that was awesome! About halfway through the night we both took our ears off because I kept hitting people and Drew’s headband was stretching out. This was a fun to wear and I was happy with our first official “couple costume”!
Hope everyone had a fun Halloween!
trish stitched 
I saw this on pinterest. I kind of love this idea and I think I’m going to do this for Halloween! Thanks for posting.
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I am being Timothy the mouse and my 1 year old girl is going to be dumbo. I bought a red dress (cheap amazon) and planned to add the yellow felt to the dress and attempt to try to make the headband. I am hoping you can give me some incite on how to make that headband. I absolutely suck at sewing and saw you used hot glue but wasn’t sure if you used it for everything and wanted to know how you got the hat to stand up. Please help this mamma have a killer costume this year.
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Hi Christina! Yes, the entire hat was made with hot glue – no sewing required! The hat is just a red felt rectangle with the short ends glued together. The top has a red felt circle, closing it and a black felt piece on the bottom.
If I remember correctly, the way I attached the hat was to make sure there was a solid bottom on the hat. The black felt piece on the bottom of Timothy’s hat covers the entire bottom, making it easy to glue that to the headband. To make it a little more secure, you can also sandwich the headband, adding another piece of felt below your bottom once the hat itself is glued on. Felt is pretty sturdy so it should have no problem standing up on its own. You can also stuff the hat with light-weight stuffing if you are having any problem.
A word of advice, make sure the headband you get is actually comfortable! These were not the best quality and after a few hours I had a major headache!
Hope this helps!
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Great tutorial!! I made the Dumbo costume for my daughter’s Disney day at school. It was very simple to do. Love that you included patterns for the ears that was super helpful. The only sewing I did was to make the ruffle. I used hot glue and fabric glue for everything else. Took me a little over an hour to get it all together including the hand stitched ruffle. Thanks a million!!
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Thank you so much for your comment Rene! I’m so happy to hear my post was helpful! ❤
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