DIY Woody Cowboy Costume for Toddler.

Last year Nick had several costumes, including Mickey, a sailor, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Monster from Where the Wild Things Are. The kid basically lived in costumes all of October. This year my husband and I started brainstorming costume ideas for our little one in the middle of September. Our go tow as Daniel Tiger since Nick is obsessed but quickly realized they didn’t have costumes small enough for him. Since I wanted us three to do a theme, we decided to go for Toy Story. Unfortunately, I could not find a Woody costume anywhere in the park or Downtown Disney area during one of our visits and the costumes I did find at other shops were very plain and expensive. Being the DIY mom that I think I am I decided to make Nick’s costume. I remember my mom made me several costumes when I was little, including a Pocahontas one that I absolutely adored. Keep on reading if you want to know how I made his costume under $20.00.

What you will need:

• Cow Print fabric
• A Yellow Shirt (Or yellow dye with a white shirt and red fabric marker)
• Foam Paper (Brown, Red, and Yellow)
• Eyelets
• Glue
• Hole Puncher
• Yarn
• A 3 (or so) foot helper. [This is always necessary in my DIYs lol]

The Vest

I used an old vest of Nick’s that fit the way I wanted the Woody one to, to draw out the pattern on the cow print fabric. You can also download a free pattern online if you don’t have a vest to go off of.

Here you can see my assistant making sure the fabric was nice and comfortable. Not at all being an inconvenience in the process lol.

I cut three pieces, one for the back and the two fronts. I decided to cut it in three pieces because I wanted to make sure the fit was not too lose and I couldn’t have done this by cutting as one piece.

I then sewed the three pieces (after measuring them on Nick and making sure the fit was what I wanted). Although I do own a sewing machine, I don’t know how to use it so I sewed everything by hand. The last thing that I sewed was the trim, which just so happened to match the Woody doll we have. I’ve seen various ways that people have done the trim, this was just what I felt more comfortable with and it was easy to hide my not so straight sewing. The trim went all around the edges of the vest and sleeve hole.

The Shirt

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a yellow button up or any yellow shirt for tha matter at my local stores. Instead, I bought a white cotton long sleeve shirt and dyed it yellow. Surprisingly, it turned out the same yellow as the one Woody is wearing. (Yes, I had Woody with me at all times in case I needed to double check something haha) Since the shirt wasn’t plaid, I made my own squares with a red fabric marker. I used cardboard to extend the sleeves so that I could make straight lines with a ruler and they would’t crunch up.

I then painted the buttons grey and sewed them on the shirt. Although Woody originally wears a collared shirt, I decided that I wouldn’t fixate on that detail since Nick is going to be wearing the bandanna over the collar anyway.

The Belt & Gun Holder

For the belt I used foam paper, purchased at my local Michael’s. I had to cut two pieces to make it wide enough to go over my little fatty’s belly. I glued these two pieces together.

For the gun holder I just eye balled the shape from the Woody doll. I folded the foam paper to cut the shape so it would have a little pouch. I then cut three small triangles for the decorations.

In order to keep the holder closed, I made three holes with my hole puncher around the holder and I used eyelets to hold it together. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I was doing this that I realized you need an eyelet machine to secure the eyelets but I found a quick way to do this by just putting glue in between the eyelets to avoid needing the special machine.

To make the little yellow and red decoration I just cut out two circles, the yellow bigger than the red. The yellow one I just started cutting little tiny triangles into it to emulate the design woody has.

For the belt buckle. I printed out a template from on-line and traced it over yellow foam paper.

The Hat

The last thing that I did was the hat. I bought a brown cowboy hat from The Dollar Tree, punched holes around it and added brown yard of a darker color through the holes. Nick won’t leave hats on for too long so I figured it was inexpensive and it won’t hurt when he decides to take it off and we either ran over it with the stroller or it gets dirty/wet on the street.

and the final product…

For jeans I am just going to have Nick use a pair he already has, so I don’t have to spend more money. And the last touch was the Sheriff badge, made out of yellow foam paper. (P.S. The jeans look short because of the way they are hung lol.)

The most expensive item were the boots which were $30.00 at Target, but you can definitely do without these boots. Other than that the cow print fabric was $10.00 but I got enough fabric for the vest, my costume of Jessie, and still have some left over. Everything else used was very inexpensive, the whole costume (minus shoes) for less than $20.00. Stay tuned to our Instagram to see Nick wearing the costume on Halloween day and our Toy Story family themed costumes.

Do you think I did a good job? Share your own costume DIYs with me in the comments!!

XOXO – L.