DIY No-Sew Care Bear Dog Costume

It’s that time of year again! Time to make a cute costume for my dog that she will not enjoy wearing. I love Halloween and I love my dog, but as much as I try, my dog does NOT love Halloween. That being said, she is a really great sport about wearing costumes and gets lots of love from passersby as we walk around the neighborhood trick-or-treating with our kids. Read on for instructions on how to make this DIY No-Sew Care Bear Dog Costume.

This year, being a child born in the 80s, I decided to make a Care Bears costume! This costume is SUPER easy to make. The only real work is finding a stuffed animal similar in size to your dog and cutting with a scissors. As you can see below, the Care Bear I bought is a little small for my dog. It would have been better if I could have found one a few inches taller as my dog has long legs, but it still worked out ok. You could make your dog a teddy bear, tiger or any stuffed animal that is big enough.

DIY No-Sew Dog Costume Materials:

Make sure to pick a stuffed animal large enough to fit your dog! Some ideas are:

14″ Bear with Cap: https://amzn.to/3AWfTxU
20″ Sloth : https://amzn.to/2WqgMja
23″ Alligator: https://amzn.to/3a2ZdsN (You’d have to cut a circle around the eyes for your dogs face and leave a the mouth/snout area intact)

Dog Costume Instructions:

Step 1: Find a stuffed animal similar in height to your dog. Any stuffed animal that is standing (this is important, a stuffed animal in different positions will not have the legs in the correct place for your dogs legs) will work, I chose a the Care Bear above. Here is a link to the 14″ Care Bear I used – https://amzn.to/2Y3TEri

Step 2: You are going to cut out the face on the stuffed animal where your dogs face will fit through. Next, cut a slit up the back of the stuffed animal and holes on the bottom of the two lower legs/feet. See photos below. You may have to get creative and cut holes behind the bottom legs depending on how the stuffed animal is sewn.

Step 4: Remove stuffing inside costume. I left stuffing inside the upper arms. In addition, I left a separate section of stuffing in the belly because it was sewn to the rainbow and it looked cuter.

Step 3: Finally, fine tune the costume. To do this I cleaned up the hole around the face a little by cutting it more evenly along with the sides once I found the correct sizing. You can also hot-glue some ribbon to each side of the slit up the back. Then tie the ribbons together for added stability when your dog is walking.

Time to try your DIY No-Sew Care Bear Dog Costume on your dog:

Your dogs face goes through the face hole and their front legs through the bottom two legs of the stuffed animal. The top two legs/arms will stay stuffed, you will not cut any holes in them. As you can see in the picture above, I originally stopped cutting just below the back of the head. Because the hole was not large enough, I ended up cutting much further up the back. You will have to try it on your dog and see how much you will need to cut.

Look how happy she is. Is it the costume or the treats I was holding just off camera? Who knows? What I do know is that I took her to the bus stop with my kids in this costume and she was the talk of the bus that day. And there you have it, our DIY No-Sew Care Bear Dog Costume! Happy Halloween all you dog lovers!