Baby Mermaid

Here's a simple mermaid costume for a baby!  Obviously this won't work for anyone who can actually walk!!

You will need:

• Approximately 15" of two different fabrics--I just used what I already had on hand.  I used a green satin for fabric #1 and an iridescent organza for fabric #2
• A small piece of  quilt batting 
• Elastic

Instructions:

Fold fabric #1 in half so the the selvages are together

Fold again keeping the selvages together--you will have a nice long rectangle.

On the end without selvage, measure up about 3"and then cut the tail fin.  You want fabric # 2 to be slightly longer than fabric #1.

Here it is opened up:

Now fold fabric #2 in half with selvages together and cut along the fold

Layer Fabric #2 on top of Fabric #1 (right sides of both facing up).  Fabric #2 with be a bit longer.  Pin selvages together and match up the bottom of both fabrics.  You have a bump of Fabric #2.  See the picture

Pin at the top of the tail fin so that the excess fabric stays above it.  Now stitch the two fabrics together along the sides tucking fabric #2 as you sew (This is just to provide texture--you could make both fabrics the same size if you wanted to)

Just push the top fabric under the presser foot as you go.

Now you need to switch your presser foot to a free motion foot.  It should look something like this:

Turn off your feed dog.

Now use free motion to create scales on your mermaid. Start the scales 2" from the top and stop the scales at the top of the tail fin.  It was hard to get a picture of the scales, but here's what I managed:

Don't worry about bumps and bubbles--texture is good!

Now do exactly the same for the back piece.

Cut a piece of batting for the tail section.  Put the two pieces right sides together with the batting on top.  Pin.

Stitch together leaving the selvage edge open.

Clip curves

Serge or zig zag the seams if you'd like.

Turn right side out.  

Stitch lines in the tail fin

Make a casing at the top edge and add elastic

All done.   Just pull this up over a onesie and put something cute in her hair and you have a Baby Mermaid!!