Pennywise the IT Clown: Full Costume, Shoes + Make-up Tutorial

Hi there instructables!

Welcome to this seasonal tutorial, here you will learn how to make your very own scary clown Pennywise costume, from the latest It movie adaptation based on Stephen King's novel.

In this tutorial I'm gonna cover every step you need to achieve an accurate cosplay of Pennywise.

From the costume, to the shoes and even tips for the makeup.

Enjoy! 😊

Step 1: Tools and Materials

To make the costume you will need:

Tools:

Measuring tape
Ruler
Sewing Machine
Scissors
Sewing pins
Pencil
Pen
Press-on buttons
3 buttons we can glue our pom-poms on for sewing onto the shirt
Cutter
Xacto knife
9x9cm Post-it
White glue
Glue gun
Lighter

Costume:

Patterning paper (I used gift wrapping paper
Cheap fabric to test with
White or creme fabric to make the costume, dupioni silk imitation or similar (I just used a light creme fabric)
White or creme plissé fabric, if you can't find this type of fabric just use normal fabric and iron it to make the wrinkles (like i did)
White gloves
Red balloons
Elastic band for clothing (2cm & 7mm)
Thread
White glue
Press on buttons
Red yarn to make the pompoms
Red 4mm ribbon
Dark red, beige, light orange (or salmon) nylon ropes

Shoes:

Ballet flats or canvas shoes
Cling film
Masking tape
White vynil
Black acrylic paint
Leather puncher
Eyelet Pliers
Eyelets
Contact glue
Shoelaces
Pom-poms

Makeup:

Concealer
White cream face paint
Red cream face paint, or lipstick works too.
Matifying powder
Black eyeshadow
Black eyeliner
Lip brush
Powder brush
Foundation brush
Bentonite clay or Fuller's earth clay (Optional if you want a cool trick for the cracks, get some!)

Step 2: Reference Photos

It makes things so much easier once you observe how the costume is build from the reference photos. The costume can be broken down in 5 parts, torso shirt, sleeves, bloomers, pants and clown collar

The shirt is made up of 3 sections:

Upper, individual strips
Middle part where the belt goes
Lower skirt, individual strips fanning out

The sleeves are made up of 3 sections too:

Puffed sleeve
Individual strips sleeve
Fan cuff

So as the pants:

Bloomers
Individual strips pants
Fan cuff

Step 3: Planning, Patterning & Main Torso Part 1

Now that we have some understanding of how the costume is built, we can get to work!

Measure the width from left to right (Seam to seam) of a shirt that fits you comfortably. In my case my preferred shirt sizing is around 45cm, by paying attention to the reference pictures I observed that the torso is comprised of 7 panels (I ended up having to make 8 panels to fit the full pattern) on each side (right and left side) which makes 14 in total. The two inner panels will overlap each other to close the shirt. To know how wide you have to make your panels, you only need to divide 45 by 13 to determine the width. In my case the panels are 3.5cm wide. Don't forget to add 5mm seam allowance both left and right on every 3.5cm panel so we can stitch our panels together!
The back of the shirt is build with 13 panels since we don't have overlapping here.
You should ideally pattern the panels on a cardboard that way it will be more durable and solid when you use it to draw out your pieces, there are so many!
Optionally with the same pattern you can cut and add a piece of fabric on the inside to make lining for the upper chest part making it more solid and clean, hiding all the seam lines of the panels
Middle section (where the belt goes) I made it 7cm high. Now you need to check where you want the belt to be, to know the full height of the panels/upper torso part. This is totally up to your preference, I picked the one I liked the most in terms of how it defines my figure. In the first movie the belt seems to sit right under the rib cage, while in the second movie (It Chapter 2) the belt starts on the belly button level. This will also determine if the third pompom is going to be attached to your belt or to the upper torso part of your costume.
Once you are happy with the placement and the height of your belt section you can draw it on the pattern and cut the pieces, these parts will be the "smooth" middle separation between the upper torso panels and the bottom panels forming the fanning out "skirt" of the shirt.

Step 4: Main Torso Part 2

Before you attach the skirt, now is a good time to check if you like the fitting of the shirt, make sure it hugs nicely around your abdomen and check that it is form fitting enough. The fabric shouldn't make crazy folds when you tighten it with a belt!

Skirt (Trapezoidal 3.5cm / 5cm x 20cm)

The skirt is made of 30 trapezoidal panels in total that have a height of 20cm, to make the skirt fan out we have to make our panels to be 3.5 cm at the top and increase to be 5cm at the end
Gather until the top of the skirt matches with the bottom of the belt section's width, then pin in place once you are happy with how your gathers look, and sew on, I made some stitches by hand to secure the skirt to the torso part, before sewing it on with the machine.

Placket

To make the placket of the shirt (right where it closes), where we will add the press on buttons later. Measure the full length from collar to the skirt and add 1 cm for seam allowance at the bottom, I want mine to have a width of 3cm, (7cm because we need to fold this piece and have seam allowance)

Collar bias tape hem (63cm x 5cm)

Measure the circumference of the neck along all the parts of our shirt together
The height of this strip should be 5 cm so that our collar will measure 3cm in the end. The extra cm is again for seam allowance.
I drew my collar measurements on a piece of newspaper to test and pin it on my shirt, I highly recommend this method.
Cut and stitch two identical collar pieces, keeping only one long edge open, flip it inside out keeping the stitched part inside
Fold a 1cm hem on both pieces at the bottom, iron inside and overlap neatly on the shirt, pin and sew.
The collar is esentially a bias tape hem.

Step 5: Sleeves

The puff sleeves

Since I was a complete noob to this, I found this very easy to understand puffy sleeves tutorial video to learn:

Credits to: Kirilee Cosplay on YouTube and DeviantArt for her puffed sleeves pattern and tutorial

Print out the template
Measure the circumference of a sleeve on your comfy shirt in my case it is 40cm, then double this amount, in my case 80cm.
For the length we measure the length from shoulder to elbow (24cm for me) and then add about 15cm to this length for extra bagginess. The way I measured this is by my sis helping me hold the tape measurer and pinning it around my elbow then adding until I am happy with the extra bagginess.
Cut and spread/distribute out the template pieces so the outer pieces edge to edge make 80cm. I leave 8cm gap between them, trace the top shape of the template, draw the bottom edge acording to the length we want (39cm) and add seam allowance too.

We’re going to add a fabric channel inside the sleeve to hold an elastic band, which tightens nicely around our biceps, to give our sleeve a puffy form. The elastic I am using is of 7mm height.

Measure a strip of our fabric that is 80cm long (like our sleeves) by 3.7cm high. Fold and iron 1.5cm inside on both top and bottom leaving a 7mm Gap which will hold the elastic later.
Sew this strip of fabric to about 14cm away from the puff sleeve bottom seam

Gathering

For the gathering I like to stitch a straight line with a low tension setting on my sewing machine, then I very gently pull the bottom string by hand (be very gentle when you do this so the string doesn't break!) to form the gathers, I then evenly distribute them. Once I reach the width/circumference of my original sleeves (40 cm) I simply tie knots with the two strings to lock the length and secure my gathers.
For the circumference of the bottom gathers, Measure the circumference of your elbow when you fully bend it and add 2 cm to that. My elbow is 27cm so the bottom gather is 29cm. Once you've got the correct measurement after gathering, make a knot with the two ends of the string to secure your gathers.
Sew the puff sleeve closed.
Now we can feed in the elastic bands into the puff sleeves, to do so, measure your biceps circumference to get a rough idea of the tightness (I made my elastics to be 27cm) and then secure with a safety pin to check if you like it as you try it on. if so, use the glue gun to secure the elastics closed and then stitch closed the elastic channels as well

Mummy bands sleeves

For the individual band/strip on the sleeves we are going to cut rectangular piece that measure 5cm by 29cm (I’m counting the seam allowance here).
For attaching the strips on, we are going to need a 25cm long rectangular piece by 29cm width, this will be our sleeve.
Start of by ironing and sewing the edge that will show on all 8 of our strips (16 strips in total, 8 for each arm) so it looks nice and neat
As we lay the strips on our sleeve fabric, we're going to make markings with a pencil where we have to sew and overlap, leaving 2.5cm exposed Everytime we overlap a new strip.
Start from the bottom up leaving 2cm seam allowance under the first strip
Make a mark on each strip 5mm away from the border of our previous strip and place them 2cm above the strip below everytime, pin and sew them then flip them over and iron right side up
A nice trick I've found to secure them down in the right place is to put some white glue in the back, check the position from the front and then sew them
Once this is done and you have both sleeves pieces with the 8 strips attached you can go ahead and sew these sleeves closed

Cuff sleeves

The outer cuffs should be 12cm high and 28cm wide and the inner cuff with the pleated fabric, should be 15cm high and 28cm wide.
Draw straight rectangular patterns that match these dimensions.
Cut the rectangle into 7 slices of 4 cm strips carefully, leaving the very top uncut, so as not to detach our slices. And spread them to have 4cm in between each.
Add weights, (I couldn't come up with a better idea than nail polish for this step haha) to hold down our pattern and trace the shapes
Then close both of these cuffs and pin and sew them to the “mummy” sleeves, overlaying the outer cuff on top of the inner cuff
For the inner cuffs (with the pleated fabric), if like me you don’t have ruffle fabric just iron the inner cuff once you've sew it to the sleeve so it has folds and wrinkles, I couldn't find any, I find twisting and ironing the normal fabric works just as nicely to create pleats (Plissé).

Sew the mummy sleeve with cuff to the puff sleeve and then sew the puff sleeve to our shirt.

Step 6: Pants

Bloomers

They should be huge and I mean HUGE! Pattern your favourite shorts, triple all the measurements. Take into account that we need extra fabric since we're going to be raising our bloomers later on when the elastic bands are attached, to create the folds and puffiness under the skirt.

Fold your pants/shorts in half to trace the outline the sewing pattern. Then cut this shape out as a reference shape
Width-wise, On a new piece of paper, trace this reference shape as the front, then we flip the pattern and trace it again 60cm away. I chose an extra 60 cm so my new bloomer would be 3 time baggier than the original shorts/pants, making it 121cm
Height-wise, Measure from under your ribcage down to your knees to get the length, 60cm for me. Add 3cm extra up and down to have room for the elastic bands.

This pattern includes fabrics for both front and back of the same leg. So you need to cut the pattern out twice, one for each leg.

Pin and stitch the inside thigh sides of both pant sections then flip one of the parts inside out and insert it into the other so that both sides face the same way once you pin and stitch the crotch
Insert and secure the elastic with a safety pin try the bloomers on to know how tight you have to make the elastics, on waist and thighs then use the glue gun to glue the elastic bands ends together and close the openings to finalize the bloomers

Mummy bands pants

This part of the pants is pretty much identical in technique as for the sleeves. same steps...

Pants are 32cm long by 37cm wide, add seam allowance of 2cm making them 34cm by 39cm.
For the individual bands attached to the pants we're going to be making 2.5 cm high by 39cm wide strips. Don't forget to add an extra and a half cm on top so we can fold and sew as well as have 1cm under each strip so each strip can overlap nice and evenly. We also need to add 5mm under our strips for seam allowance, to fold, iron and have neat clean edges that show. So for the pants we are going to be needing 12 panels that are 5cm high by 39cm wide
Start of by ironing and sewing the edge that will show on all 12 of our strips (24 strips in total, 12 for each leg) so it looks nice and neat
As we lay the strips on our sleeve fabric, we're going to make markings with a pencil where we have to sew and overlap, leaving 2.5cm exposed Everytime we overlap a new strip.
Start from the bottom up leaving 2cm seam allowance under the first strip
Make a mark on each strip 5mm away from the border and place them 2cm above the strip below everytime, pin and sew them then flip them over and iron right side up
Use the white glue method in the back to secure them down in the right place check the position from the front and then sew them

Cuff ankles

Again this is pretty much exactly like our sleeve cuffs

Pants cuffs are 36cm circumference and 12cm high, inner pants cuffs are 36cm circumference and 15cm high
Draw straight rectangular patterns that match these dimensions and cut the parts carefully leaving the top uncut, so as not to detach our slices, divided into 9 slices of 4 cm strips and spread them to have 4cm in between each.
Add weights, (nail polish again! lol) to hold down our pattern and trace the shapes

Once this is done and you have both pant pieces with the 12 strips attached as well as the cuffs you can go ahead and sew these to our bloomers

Step 7: The Spine

To understand the idea, measure and cut a 9x9 cm square, or a post-it note of the same size.
Fold and cut it in half.
Fold one of the halves then cut.
Now you should have one big pyramid and two smaller pyramids
Fold the corners that will be visible, (make 5mm folds this is the seam allowance).
Cut a flat piece of fabric to the same length from the collar seam down to the bottom of the skirt (55cm long by 9cm wide, don't forget to add extra for seam allowance)
We're sewing first from top to bottom, the big middle pyramid. Shift 1.4cm lower and sew two smaller pyramids, you can use white glue to secure the fabric in place before sewing, makes things easier. then repeat this process until we fill the whole strip of fabric
Leaving the last big pyramid to come out more than our strip of fabric, and fold the two side pyramids to have a flat bottom, this way we have that nice pointy tail at the end.
Sew this piece of fabric to another one of identical size and flip it inside out, then handstitch the bottom using the invisible stitch method.
Now you can sew (I hand-stitched it) the spine onto the back of the shirt, leaving a gap where we will be inserting the belt.

Step 8: Clown Collar

Measure from shoulder to shoulder
Make a circle around your shoulders with the tape measurer, then double this
For me it is 90cm doubled makes 180 cm
Make 2 of 12cm tall x 180cm wide Make 2 of 14cm tall x 180cm wide
We're going to make a strip to sew our collar pieces on. Measure your neck circumference for the neckpiece to feel comfortable and loose not tight!
37cm for me, add seam allowance so we can add press on buttons later. I made mine 43cm long by 9 cm tall
Pin and sew the gathered strips on our neck strip in cascading fashion top to bottom by the gathered ends then flip the whole thing rightside up
Stitch a press on button to complete the collar for the ease of putting it on and taking it off

Step 9: The Shoes

The shoes of pennywise looks like custom-made old-school boxer shoes. Its very fun and easy to modify old shoes with some craft leather, vinyl, here’s how:

Put on your old shoes and wrap cling film from around your shoe all the way up to your shin.
Start placing masking tape on the cling wrap to extract the 3d form of your foot and shin. (Don’t wrap the masking tape super tight, or you will have trouble freeing yourself from it)
Sketch the shoes shapes on the masking tape as shown in the picture.
Cut out the tape-clingfilm matrix and transfer the patterns flat on paper.
Cut out the patterns with your craft leather.
Stitch the left and right side that form the main frame of the shoe together
Dye/ paint your craft leather/vinyl white and dark blue like the reference.

Putting the shoe together

Start by glueing the tongue to the toe section with contact glue.
Then glue this piece to the shoe, while the glue is still tacky and we can still move the fabric around, with an xacto knife we're going to make darts to further flatten the front fabric on our shoes.
Then we're going to carefully trim the excess with the xacto knife being cautious to not cut the shoe but just above the sole.
Once you're done trimming, the fabric will be a bit lifted from the shoe, just add a little more glue to glue back the edge of the fabric to the shoe.
You can push the fabric into the sole with the aid of the blunt side of the xacto.
Don't worry about the paint coming off, we'll do some touch ups once all this glueing is done.
Before we glue the main frame of our shoe we’re going to add the eyelets, I made mine to be 3cm apart from each other. With the help of a white pen or any other tool you can mark with, we're going to make little dots leaving a 3cm gap everytime to mark where to put our eyelets, make the holes first with the tool then place the eyelets. Once you have one side with the eyelets done you can fold and make a mark through the eyelet hole for the other side, that way they will be symmetrical and for the second shoe too
We’re going to cover the rest of the shoe with contact glue and glue down our main frame now
Once it is glued, repeat the refining process of trimming the excess fabric and pushing it into the sole to have a clean edge
Add your shoelaces

Step 10: It's All in the Details!

Belt

This part is a breeze after the complex methods we learned while making the costume haha

Just measure the circumference of your abdomen and make the fabric long enough to include press on buttons as well later.
These are my measurements 10cm high x 76cm long (this is including 2 cm seam allowance)
Cut two identical rectangle shapes with the fabric and sew the together.

Nylon ropes

The ropes I bought are of 2mm diameter, I got them from etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/728725039/2mm-satin-c...
Buy more than 3 meters of each rope !! I had barely enough for all the ropes on the shirt plus the belt.
We are going to twist our three ropes together, like so: http://www.paracordguild.com/make-rope/
Before we get started twisting, we have to burn the ends to join the three ropes together so they don't come undone. WARNING: use tweezers to press them together, as the burnt nylon is extremely hot!!
We are going to be making hoops/bracelets that fit our sleeves
Measure how long you have to make them and then cut and burn the ends again but this time joining both ends of our rope to secure your twists and ropes together forming a hoop
Once the ropes form bracelets you simply sew these on also to secure them on the shirt
For the elastic band part of the puff sleeve we're going to make this one adjustable so we can make it tighter if we want to, like so: https://youtu.be/S9G-3i_8BuU (I made mine 43 cm long)

These are the measurements I used for my costume.

Arm Cuff and elbow rope size 26cm
Biceps (elastic) rope size 43cm for one loop with adjustable knots, initially I did want to make it longer to be able to wrap it twice around my arm, (like it seems to be in the movie) but I didn’t buy enough Nylon rope
Armpit 38cm
Leg cuffs rope size 30cm
Belt ropes size 74cm

Pom-Poms

You will need to make 5 of these, 3 for the shirt and 2 for the shoes

I made mine 3cm in size
This is the tutorial I used: https://blog.pommaker.com/the-best-way-to-tie-a-po...
Basically we're going to wrap the yarn on a 3cm wide cardboard piece with a slit in the centre, this way we can secure the yarn at the centre easily (I used waxed sewing thread to secure in the centre instead of yarn)
Alternatively to the cardboard you can use a fork to wrap the yarn around
I wrapped my yarn around the cardboard piece a 100 times
Once the wrapping and tying is done, cut the sides to finish up our pompom
You may still want to trim a bit if the yarn is longer on some ends

For the shirt

Get the glue gun
Glue 3 pom-poms to buttons
Stitch the buttons to the shirt

For the shoes

If you don't want to glue your pom-poms directly to your shoes...

Get the glue gun
Clip and glue a paperclip onto a circle cutout of cardboard, while the glue is still hot stick the pom-pom on top of the clip
Make 2 of these
Attach the paperclips onto our shoelaces

Cuff beads

Beads on ribbons

6 beads for each arm cuff (12 in total)
8 beads for each leg cuff (16 in total)
Cut strips of ribbon that are 24cm long to loop around each bead, loop so you have six lines of the ribbon showing on the beads
I made this little tutorial video:
I couldn't find 4mm wide red ribbon so I used a red sharpie to color a 4mm pink ribbon I got instead.
Next in order to make a bracelet, we will be glueing the beads to strips of ribbon
Measure the circumference of your cuffs at the seam (I cut two 26cm strips of ribbon for the arm cuffs and two 30cm for the leg cuffs) and evenly space out the beads leaving a 4cm gap in between (for the arms) and 3.5cm (for the legs).Make sure to alternate between glueing the ribbon higher and lower. Alternatively to glueing our beads to a ribbon, you could glue them to the same red nylon rope we used previously, I just ran out of it so I had to use ribbon instead.
Measure the gaps and make marks with a pencil of where the beads will be.
Use all purpose glue (or textile glue if you have some) to glue down the beads to the ribbon first, put some weight to press them down and leave to dry
Fold the ends of the ribbons strips over and glue these onto themselves, leave to dry again

Cuff pom-poms

Use a small desert fork to make these pompoms
You can use the same twisted nylon ropes we made or use yarn like I did
Wrap 50 times for the longer ribbons of our beads and 25 times (half the size) for the shorter ribbons.
Secure tightly with waxed thread in the centre
Then cut open the pompoms
Wrap around and glue these to our bead ribbons with the glue gun. Again be very careful as the glue is burning hot! Always use a tool like tweezers or gloves.
Once your pompoms are nicely glued you can start trimming off the excess to make them less fluffy and more like the reference
Since I only had red yarn when I made these pompoms, I decided to add some colour variantion by gently brushing beige colour acrylic paint and some dark brown as well, this way giving them more depth.
To close the ribbons into bracelets, you will need to glue the two ends with the glue gun (I can't think of a more sturdy method) WARNING: again use tweezers to press them together please
Sew the pom-pom bead bracelets onto the cuffs of our shirt and pants

Press-on buttons

Simply check in the mirror where you want to place them
Make small markings with a pencil
Sew the press-on buttons on the shirt, belt and clown collar as well.

Step 11: Put Your Make-up On

If you have long hair like me, put your hair in a hairclip

Cover your brows with a thick layer of non toxic kids craft glue in a stick
Go over it with a layer of white glue to further smooth the surface
Use the blowdryer on cold to help it dry faster
Apply concealer

Cracks are optional, this next step is a bit messy but it makes a really cool effect

In a bowl mix a tablespoon of bentonite clay with some water, then apply to your forehead and side cheeks, spread the clay with your fingers making very small layers around areas where we don't want any, to blend.
Use the blowdryer on cold to dry it faster
Apply white cream face paint with the help of a foundation brush
Set the cream with matifying powder
Go over your cracks with a very thin layer of white glue, this will help the clay stay in place and last all day
Apply black eyeshadow on your lids and a bit on your lower lids
Line your eyes
With a very small brush draw thin mean eyebrows, I mixed some black in white facepaint to get a grey colour, it's important that you start drawing the brows lower than your real brows, that way you will look very mean. I needed some trial and error to notice this, but the second time I did the makeup for the photoshoot I didn't look as mean as on Halloween night haha
With the help of a lip brush make Pennywise's iconic red cheek lines, as well as painting your nosetip and your lips
Go over it with the matifying powder to set everything
And you're done!

Now you can wear a wig or paint your hair with some orange chalks, I did both.

Step 12: And... Voilà! Now... You'll Float Too!

Thank you for taking a look at this instructable, and reading this far, if you have any suggestions or questions, please feel free to leave a comment, don't hesitate, I appreciate all the support and feedback of my work

I want to give some much deserved honorable mentions to my sister Justine for being my assistant and my boyfriend Magnum for supporting me in this project and helping me plan the whole thing out ♥

Now you can take fun pictures and impress your friends and family with your costume, please be responsible and don't make it too scary for your peers, this costume is meant for fun. I had a great time creating it :)

Good Luck!