DIY Children’s Pony Costume

Check out how I created this sweet DIY Children’s Pony Costume using fleece! The hood with a fleece-tied mane was a fun project that turned out so cute!

For Halloween this year, my daughter asked to be a pony! I had a lot of fun creating this cute pony costume for her! Our Halloweens are usually cold, so my go-to Halloween fabric is fleece. Not only is it inexpensive – especially when on sale – but I love that it doesn’t fray so I don’t need to finish my edges. This definitely helps sewing go quickly!

I used fleece to make my daughter’s Baby Dragon costume a couple years ago and I also used fleece – the exact same colors as this pony – to make my son a lion costume when he was two. I actually used some of the fleece left over from that lion costume for the pony – which made me super happy to use some materials from my stash!

To create this pony costume, I used a commercial pattern by Simplicity to make the fleece dress. I like that the dress had a hi-lo hem. It reminded me of a long pony tail in the back. I loosely followed the pattern – skipping the lining and just turning over my neckline and top-stitching. Since it will be too cold for a sleeveless dress, I added sleeves.

The pony hat is my favorite part of the costume! I created the pattern using one of the hats my daughter already owns. I lined it in the same color fleece and added a snap closure to help keep it on. I used pink felt for the inside of the ears and lots of different shades of brown and tan fleece for the mane.

After hemming the sleeves, I added hoofs with brown felt. This really helped make the costume look like a pony!

I had the hardest time figuring out how to create the mane! After several failed attempts – including an entire night of sewing individual strips of fleece onto the hat – I finally thought of trying to tie the fleece like you do for those popular no-sew tie blankets. This worked so well! The knot helped the fleece stick out straight, which was perfect for the mane!

Below you can see a few pictures of the tail – which was done the exact same way as the mane. I cut long rectangles of four different colors of fleece – about 6″ x 20″. I positioned two rectangles on either side of the zipper/center back seam and stitched them down along their center line. This now gave me four layers of fleece on each side. I cut the fleece into 1″ strips and knotted two layers together. I ended up with four rows of knotted fleece, two on either side of the zipper!

I love how the mane and tail turned out – and cannot believe how fast it was to create. It actually took me less time to create the mane this way than it did to seam rip my failed attempts! :) I think this method could be used with an existing hooded sweatshirt. It may be a bit heavy on the hood if it doesn’t have a drawstring to hold it closed under the chin. I’m very temped to make my daughter a unicorn hoodie – especially since I have so much fleece left over from my unicorn pillow project!

My kiddos love their Halloween costumes this year and I really enjoyed making them! You can see the robot costume I made my son – it lights up! They are already talking about what they want to be for next year. I can’t wait to see what they come up with :)

Check out my other fun Halloween Crafts including more children’s costumes!

Happy Halloween!!