Part 2 of 2: The Grass Skirt - Simple Hawaiian Costume for Kids On a Budget Against the Clock

The "Grass Skirt"

It was the night before International Day at school. As Clever Daughter was getting ready for bed, she admitted that deep, deep down she really wanted to wear a dress with a grass skirt and the lei, rather than the shorts and shirt  + lei combination I had thought we were agreed on.

I'll Do My Best.

And Quickly!


I used:

• The remainder of the tissue paper from the lei in my previous post (£0)
• I had a roll of brown parcel tape, but for argument's sake you can get it at Poundworld (£1)
• I also used some fabric ribbon I had kept from a gift, you could use regular gift wrap ribbon or string or anything like that.
• Glue gun and glue; superglue would work too, or even stitching with thread.

This is how:

• I was smart enough to measure her waist before she went to sleep, whew! 
• Then I grabbed 3 of the greenest looking sheets of tissue paper I had left which were luckily still long enough (even after the lei cutting) to cover the full width I needed and about 6cm more. Lucky! 
• I lay all three pieces on top of each other.
• I marked out a waistband about a finger length long (no time to measure!)
• Freehand I cut strips of about 2cm widths up to my allocated waistband.

• Keep cutting until the whole skirt is in tendrils hanging from the waistband.
• To strengthen the waistband I separated my 3 layers of skirt from each other (carefully!) and I stuck a strip of packing tape all the way along the length of each skirt's waistband.  (It wasn't smooth or neat, but for strength it was necessary)
• Now I had to connect all three skirts together again so I lined up two of them and used my packing tape to tape them together with a  piece overlapping the top (half on one skirt and then half on the other skirt.) 
• I then repeated that attaching the two joined layers to the last layer.

• To make our skirt wearable I used my trusty glue gun to attach a piece of ribbon on the inside of each end ensuring that when I tied the tightest knot it matched the waist measurement I had taken earlier.

And the rest is happy history.

Clever daughter had a great International Day. People liked her costume and knew what it was representing (whew!)  Admittedly the tissue paper strands of her skirt snapped off constantly when she sat down and she and some of the kids had fun chasing her around trying to steal the strands, so something stronger like perhaps green plastic would have been a much better choice if I had the materials.

This is what came home afterward:

Definitely no second use here...!  :)

I am Tracey and I am proud that I made a grass skirt for my little girl in 45 minutes!