How to Make a Super Cool Ursula Costume

My 13-year old granddaughter, Felicity, was cast as Ursula the Sea Witch in a youth theater production of Disney’s Little Mermaid. (Some of you Makelings may remember that I made a Breezy Above-The-Sea Costume and a A Sparkly Under-the-Sea Costume when she played as Ariel a couple of years back.)

The Super Cool Ursula Concept for a Cunning Sea Witch

Ursula is a BIG character—a villainous and powerful octopus. She is dramatic, manipulative, and wickedly charismatic. What a fun role for Felicity to play and what a fun costume for me to make!

When designing a costume for musical theater, I consider mutliple facets. How will the costume move on stage? How will it look under the lights? Will it be comfortable to perform in? Can she get in and out of the costume easily? And there was one added requirement: this costume also needed to fit an understudy who will be performing the Ursula role in one of the scheduled performances. Lucky for me, the understudy is built very similar to Felicity.

I got started by searching for some design inspiration online. Almost every Ursula costume I found was very big, bulky, and strapless. In most cases, the costume included some manner of floor length skirt that was a mass of fabric and stuffing. Albeit, this is an accurate representation of the Disney character, I knew a costume of this genre would only overwhelm Felicity and her understudy. A big octopus costume seemed like a recipe for disaster on stage, and would also limit movement. Thus the challenge revealed itself: adapt the essence of Ursula’s diabolical bold look to suit the tall, very slender build of my granddaughter.

An idea began to brew inside my head – a shiny, purpley, sequiney idea. I envisioned a a crazy mini skirt made of eight tentacles, topped off with a slick, form-fitting bodice. I dug through through my pattern collection and found Simplicity 3629. This pattern checked all of my boxes. S3629 includes a balloon sleeve blouse paired with a hip length, square neckline, zip-up-the- back fully lined bodice. S3629 would fit the bill nicely.

My super cool Ursula costume concept came together in a quick sketch traced off the pattern envelope. Once we received director approval, it was time to go…

…FABRIC SHOPPING!!!!!!!!

I strive to make a costume that delivers a big impact on stage. In most cases, this means shiny, eyecatching fabrics. When I’m looking for specialty fabrics I really need evaluate color, weight and sparkle in person. New Rainbow Fabric (NRF) is one of my go-to Chicago area fabric resources and it has a large selection of reasonably priced fancy fabrics.

Materials Selected for Our Super Cool Ursula Costume

Allover sequin fabric for bodice and tentacle tops:
This micro-sequin mesh is comparatively lightweight for an all-over sequin fabric. The color is a perfectly menacing deep dark purply-navy. I really like how it gives the impression of sleek, smooth, sparkley octopus skin. Added bonus: my Pfaff could handle micro-sequin seams without having to tediously remove the sequins from the seam lines, speeding up production.

Lining for bodice and underlining for tentacle tops and mini skirt:
I spied a blue-purple acetate lining way at the bottom of the pile of bolts on the lining table. Marked at $5 per yard, the price was right. And the color and weight was exactly what I had in mind. I bought the lining in spite of some fading found all along one selvedge edge, and got a nice price reduction. Score!

Allover sequin fabric for bodice and tentacle tops:
This micro-sequin mesh is comparatively lightweight for an all-over sequin fabric. The color is a perfectly menacing deep, dark, purply-navy. I really like how it gives the impression of sleek, smooth octopus skin. Added bonus: my Pfaff could handle sewing micro-sequin seams without having to tediously remove the sequins from the seam lines, speeding up production.

The velvet for the tentacle bottoms — This stretch velvet is lightweight and a wonderful violet-purple contrast to the sequin mesh. I could imagine how the sheen of velvet would change in tone as the tentacles curved and twisted and bounced. At $7 per yard… a no brainer.

Sleeve organza/neckline ruffle:
In my mind’s eye, I envisioned an iridescent organza for those big balloon sleeves, reminiscent of bioluminescence found in sea life. I found exactly what I was looking for at one of my trusted online fabric resources — Lace Emily. There was a a week’s wait for it, but the “blue-purple gradient organza” was worth it. I LOVE how it shines and changes from blue and to purple to green in the light.

Pulling It All Together

This Super Cool Ursula Costume may look sleek and simple, but it is quite a complex project. Everything seems so easy and clear-cut when you’re just thinking through the process in your mind… But, Makelings, you must know how that goes? Get ready for a big ol’ blogpost 🙂

Tackling The Tentacles

The tentacles are the most important and character defining feature of any Sea Witch costume. I envisioned lively tentacles. Tentacles that curled and bounced as Ursula strutted about the stage. Initially, I considered using armature wire to keep the poly-fil stuffed tentacles curly and upright. But then I couldn’t figure out how to engineer a comfortable, wearable wire sub-structure.

Truth is, a wire armature just seemed overly complicated to me. Also, I worried about costume durability, which I’ve learned from past experience, is a real issue in youth theater. A wired substructure is so easy to crush in the chaos backstage. I didn’t want the costume to be difficult to put on. A complicated structure can be heavy and uncomfortable to wear. Wire could make tentacles stiff instead of bouncy and alive. And nothing would be worse than droopy or dead looking tentacles. I worried and pondered over the tentacle dilemma while forging ahead with on making the sequined bodice .

A Doggy Toy Eureka Moment

While cutting the bodice, my little mini golden doodle, Murphy, came and dropped her very gross dog toy on my foot. “Time to play!” Murphy loves her toys to bits and this little stuffed octopus toy is very much “loved”.

Picking up the toy, I headed out to the yard, annoyed to see that she had already managed to chew through one of the tentacles. I examined the torn tentacle, and saw that they were cute and curly due to the addition of a piece of taut elastic cording sewn into the tentacle.

NOTE: Murphy’s octopus was laundered prior to making this video 😉

EUREKA!!!

I knew I could achieve the same effect I on my much larger Ursula tentacles using a combination of poly-fil for shape and stretched elastic for curl. Stretched elastic is the simple, lightweight solution that will make my tentacles come alive.

Tentacle Construction Details

Tentacle Tops and Bottoms

Each tentacle is constructed from two fabric pieces:

• Tentacle tops are cut from the sequin fabric and underlined with the purple lining
• Tentacle bottoms are slightly smaller than the tops (see sketch above for exact sizes) and cut from the stretch velvet

Before sewing the tops to the bottoms, I attached a piece of .5″ elastic to the tip of the tentacle top. Pulling the elastic very taut, I stretched and sewed it down the tentacle center (marked with a chalked guideline) all the way to the end.

I find it hard to hold elastic taut and and sew at the same time, and I don’t know if I could have accomplished it with out the IDT system on my Pfaff. (built in walking foot) But because I varied how taut I held the elastic when sewing, some tentacles were curlier than others. I think these variations made for more organic looking tentacles.

Next Tentacle Step

I pinned the stretchy tentacle sequin tops to the flat velvet bottoms, sewing a .5″ seam around, leaving the bottom end open. Using a wooden spoon, I turned each tentacle and lightly stuffed it with polyfil. I was judicious with the quantity of stuffing. Too much polyfill weighed down the tentacle. Not enough, and the tentacle looks too wrinkley.

Tentacles are for Suckers

To make the costume more octopus-like, the tentacles needed some suckers. Real octopi have rows of suckers that graduate in size from small to medium to large . I decided to try and mimic this pattern, but in a more abstract way.

I used flat iridescent paillette sequins of various sizes, cut with a slit from center to edge, and then twisted to form a little cone secured with a bit of cellophane tape. After punching a little tiny hole at the tip of the cone, I hand stitched the “suckers” to the velvet tentacle undersides, using a single translucent sequin in the center to secure the stitching, knotting it in place before moving to the next sucker.

These suckers looked fabulous under the stage lights. The iridescent cones bounced and caught the light and glistened on stage, adding to the under-the-sea feel.

Turning Tentacles Into a Wearable Skirt

Now I had to make the tentacles work as a skirt. I designed a little mini skirt to to carry the tentacles comfortably around the hips.

With a simple elastic waistline, the skirt measures 8″ long x Felicity’s hip measurement +2″. It has two layers of fabric: a black base layer for attaching the tentacles, and a sequined over layer meant to hide the tentacle attachment points. The black layer is cotton batiste strengthened with a fusible interfacing. To provide a sturdy attachment point for the tentacles, I added 1.5″ horsehair braid to the hem

Next I sewed a layer of lined sequin mesh onto the base layer, just beneath the waist casing. Then, one at a time, I pinned the tentacles to the sturdy black base layer, and machine stitched them on. It became harder and harder to maneuver the skirt through the machine with the addition of each tentacle. I’m lucky the harp dimension on my Pfaff is so deep, or I would have needed to hand-stitch the tentacles on.

After I inserting 1″ non-roll elastic into the waistline casing, I hand slip-stitched the sequin layer to the tentacles, to completely hide the attachment points. Whew! Positioning and attaching the tentacles proved to be the most difficult aspect of making this costume.

Sewing Together Ursula’s Bodice

Making the bodice is pretty straight forward sewing process. Though I did make a few adjustments to the pattern before cutting:

• I rounded the front center piece

• I omitted the zipper at the back, and replaced it with a series of grommets for a laced ribbon closure. This was done to easily accommodate sizing for the understudy.
• I inserted a 1.5″ organza ruffle at the neckline.

After basting the lining together, I used it as a muslin to accomplish a quick fitting on Felicity. As a result of this fitting, I made a few minor adjustments to shorten the armseyes and shoulder straps, which then I copied when cutting the sequin pieces. When we were happy with the fit, I basically followed the pattern instructions for constructing the lined bodice – sans zipper, and with ruffle. Once the bodice was constructed, I pounded on the grommets to form the laced closure.

Bioluminescent Balloon Sleeves

I thought that the full blouse would only bunch inside the bodice, and maybe inhibit Felicity’s arms movement. Consequently I decided to only make two independent sleeves with elastic casings at the upper arm and wrist. I used the sleeve pieces from the Simplicity 3629 blouse a guide for redrafting the sleeves to add more “balloon” and more drama. Because Felicity has super long arms, I also lengthened the sleeve pattern and added a ruffled elastic casing at the upper arm.

My iridescent organza is very sheer, and so I was concerned about seeing very obvious elastic casings on the sleeves. Hence I cut a few 1.5″ bias strips from the organza and made double fold bias tape to use as casings. With the sleeves flat, I sewed on the casings and finished the wrist and upper arm ruffles with a narrow hem. Once the sleeve seams were sewn, I fished the elastic through the casings.

And I fortunately know a little magic… it’s called sewing!!!

Creating this unique and dramatically different super cool Ursula costume for my granddaughter was both challenging and fun. With its striking tentacled mini skirt that slithered and shimmered with the richness of velvet and sparkle, to the sleek fitted bodice, and irridescent accents, our design brought a bold, modern twist to the classic villainess.

Every element—from the movement of the tentacles to the interplay of textures and light—was chosen to make Felicity shine on stage, both literally and figuratively. Seeing her embody Ursula with such flair and confidence in a costume that was entirely her own was the ultimate reward, and a moment I will never forget.