Harry Potter Accessories to Make

Make cool Harry Potter accessories as costumes for yourself or as gifts for the children in your family. If you sew, you can easily make cloaks and tunics, knitters can make scarves or knitted tunics, embroiderers can have great fun with the Hogwarts house badges, and if you enjoy crafts you can make hats, wands, broomsticks, and even a “mad eye”.

Click on the headings below to go to the Squidoo page for each item.

Wands

Find a fairly straight stick, with one or two knots for effect, and sand it well with fine sandpaper. Stain with dark wood stain and add some silver paint to the tip if you wish. Varnish and allow to dry according to the manufacturer’s instructions. You may want to sand down the dried varnish with an ultra-fine sandpaper and add a second and third layer of varnish to give an extra gleam and polish to the wand.

The image seen here is Harry Potter's wand from Costume Craze.

Broomsticks

Either use an old millet broom or make your own using a long, thick stick and a bunch of twigs. Sand, stain, and varnish the broom as with the wands, and paint “Firebolt” on the side in silver.

Image seen here is the Harry Potter broomstick from Costume Craze.

Hats

Remember the witches’ hats you made for Halloween? The tips for making fabric hats are towards the end of this article.

Mad-Eye Moody’s Mad Eye

Warner Bros have made this one easy for us – use an old watch strap, extended with elastic to fit over the head if needed, paint an eye on a polystyrene or plastic half-ball (or buy a realistic eye from a joke shop) and glue to the watch-face.

Or alternatively, you could get a Mad-Eye Moody mask like this one pictured here.

House Badges

You will need a house badge for the cloaks and tunics. These are worn on the left hand side of the chest. You can make the badge as simple or as fancy as you are able – from a golden “G” on red for Gryffindor, bronze “R” on blue for Ravenclaw, silver “S” on green for Slytherin, or black “H” on golden-yellow for Hufflepuff, to a detailed lion, eagle, snake, or badger with the appropriate background colour.

Here are some ideas:

Cloaks

Use a piece of black sheeting and an equal sized sheet of the house-colour you wish to make the cloak for – red for Gryffindor; gold/yellow for Hufflepuff; blue for Ravenclaw; green for Slytherin. Sew three sides together inside out. To make it quicker and easier to sew the final side, turn the right way out and sew the final side and glue or sew a black or matching coloured ribbon folded over the raw edge to hide it. This is the bottom edge.

Optional hood: Sew two smaller squares of black and coloured fabric together. Fold in half with the colour outside, and sew across the top. Glue matching ribbon over the seam to hide it as this will show when the hood is down. Glue or sew black ribbon around the outer raw edge of the hood to neaten it. Attach the hood to the cloak and arrange so that the cloak has some slack at the shoulders.

Sew four or five buttons down the front of the chest area and sew a corresponding loop of ribbon on the other side. Glue or sew the appropriate house badge on the left side of the chest.

Hogwarts House Tunics

The Hogwarts house tunics are long sleeved and bi-coloured according to the house colour: red for Gryffindor; gold/yellow for Hufflepuff; blue for Ravenclaw; green for Slytherin.

The right side of the tunic body is the house colour while the left is black with the Hogwarts house badge on the chest. The sleeves are the opposite colour to the body - the left arm is coloured and the right is black.

You will need approximately 1.5m in length of coloured fabric and 1.5m of black fabric, depending on width. Enough matching coloured ribbon to go around the neck, wrists, and bottom seams.

Find a long-sleeved top or a t-shirt that already fits.

Trace around this top onto a large sheet of newspaper. Extend the length if you want a full tunic.

Cut out your pattern. Cut the pattern in half down the middle, and cut the sleeves off.

Lay one piece of fabric on top of the other and pin together in several places.

Arrange and pin all your pattern pieces to your combined fabric square.

Leave a space of about half an inch on all sides as you cut around the newspaper pattern pieces. This extra space will be used when the pieces are sewn together.

Match up the fabric pieces inside out:

Front: place the right-hand-side coloured piece against the left-hand-side black piece (wrong sides of both fabric facing outwards). Sew these two pieces together down the middle.

Back: place the left-hand-side coloured piece against the right-hand-side black piece (wrong sides out). Sew these two pieces together down the middle.

Join: sew each of the shoulders of the front piece to the shoulders of the back piece, leaving a hole for the head.

Sleeves: place the two coloured sleeves together (wrong sides out). Sew together along the top of the arm only. Repeat with the black sleeves.

Attach the sleeves to the body:

Lay the body out flat with the right side of the fabric facing upwards. Lay the right side of the sleeve over the body and fit the arm-hole of the sleeve to the arm-hole of the body. Pin together and sew. Repeat with the other sleeve.

Making up the tunic:

Fold the tunic over again at the shoulders, so that the wrong sides of the fabric are facing outwards. Pin and sew the tunic together all the way from the wrist of the sleeve, up the arm, and down the side of the body.

Finishing off:

Sew or glue ribbon around the raw edges of the neck-hole, wrists, and bottom edge.

Hogwarts House Scarves

Scarves are also bi-coloured: large red stripes and thinner golden-yellow stripes for Gryffindor; large blue, thin bronze for Ravenclaw; large green, thin silver-grey for Slytherin; and large yellow, thin black for Hufflepuff.

This article was first published on BellaOnline in November 2005 and is also featured on Squidoo. © Elsa Neal

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