Cape Cod Creativity : My New Favorite Thing: Making Tutus

My friend and coworker Jenna tricked me into signing up for a Halloween 5K. She promised that I would get a t-shirt and that we could dress up. Of course I also had to run...We decided that we had to wear tutus and we could also use them for our Halloween costumes. For the race we just wore the tutus but then for actual Halloween we were a butterfly and a witch.

We bought our tulle at Walmart. Most of it was only 97 cents a yard. We looked at a couple of pins on Pinterest and the general recommendation was 8 yards of tulle for an adult sized tutu. I bought 7 yards in purple and then a half yard each of 4 different things to add on and some ribbon. I spent $23 at Walmart.

My supplies

Jenna's supplies

I already had a bunch of purple ribbon (leftover from my wedding) so we decided to just use that instead of elastic for the waist. I think I might try it with elastic next time. The ribbon is fine though and is adjustable. I just knotted it in the back and it did not come undone even while running.

The entire tutu making process took about 2 hours. The longest part was cutting all of the strips of tulle. We just measured how long we wanted the tutu to be, added a couple of inches for the knot, and doubled it. I think my strips ended up being 30 inches long and then 4 inches wide. Once the pieces were cut it was pretty easy to knot the tulle on the ribbon. I wanted my tutu to be poofy so I pushed all of the knots close together.

My tulle looks blue in the pictures but it is purple!

Besides the regular tulle I also added sparkly tulle, velvet, ribbon, and lace. Jenna did a couple of different colors and added ribbon and spiders. She used spider rings and just slid them on and they stayed by themselves.

Finished Product

Not too bad for $20 and two hours. I already have gotten to wear it twice and I am sure I will wear it again. Now I want to make a tutu for every holiday and occasion!

The tutu got a little beat up on the 5K from getting stuck between my legs and in bushes/branches but it survived and so did I...I even got 3rd place in the race in my age group. Out of 3 people...I only made it because of Jenna encouraging me!