Shoyru

I don't think NeoPets has become quite the universally known phenomeon that Pokemon has, so I feel compelled to post a picture of what I was aiming for here. This is Shoyru, a cute dragon-like creature. It comes in different colors, but we went for the purple version because we had plenty of purple.


When the girls told me they had to be Shoyru for Halloween, I admit to being a bit stumped at first. I'd given up on papier mache, and wasn't willing to risk having another costume destroyed by rain. Hooded jackets seemed to be the way to go.

The wings were quite the undertaking, and I was very proud of them. I repurposed the purple and silver sparkly velveteen fabric from two of my previous year's dance recital costumes. I deconstructed several coat hangers to form the wire frame, and wrapped them in the silver fabric, adding safety pins liberally to hold everything in place. Although I later stitched everything instead, I suspect there are still quite a few safety pins lost in there somewhere. Then I stitched on the purple fabric as webbing, and finally added strips of the purple to serve as a harness so the wings could be worn. I used more purple fabric to form the tails, and stuffed them with the batting I had saved from the dinosaur tails several years earlier. The head piece was cardboard covered in more purple fabric, and sewn on to the hood of Karen's purple jacket. Allison's purple hooded jacket turned out not to work well, so instead I took the one-armed top of that same purple dance costume, sewed up part of the neck to leave a face-sized opening, put cardboard in the one sleeve and sewed it closed so it would sit on top of the head, and cut slits for arms in the appropriate places -- she could then wear this over her purple jacket. The big manga-style eyes were drawn on paper, cut out, and glued to the sides of the heads. Karen already had purple leggings -- I picked up some purple pants for Allison at the thrift store.


Finally we were all ready to go trick-or-treating!