This is an easy costume that a group of friends and I made for a costume race in San Francisco. It can be accessorized in any number of ways - some of us wore the octopus legs over a tutu, some over leggings or shorts. While we went with simple tank tops, you could also get creative and do something more fun for the top. A lot of the DIY octopus costumes out there seem to have pretty shapeless legs, so I liked how we got ours to curl. If you still don't have a costume for halloween, this is a quick one can be made in an afternoon!

Step 1: What You Need

You will need a glue gun and a sewing machine to make this, and the supplies are as follows:

Legs
Two contrasting fabrics for the top and bottom of the legs. Joann's had a fleece fabric with circular indentations that was perfect for the bottom (not pictured here, this is just normal fleece as I documented this after the fact). For the top, we all used different fabrics. I had some watery batik laying around, and used that.
Elastic
Stuffing

Headpiece
Feather fascinator/hair clip - I got this at a costume shop near me, and can't seem to find them online. This is close, though.
Large white pom poms
Small black pom poms

Step 2: Cut Fabric

Cut your 8 legs. I did not document this at the time I actually made it, so went back and made a leg for documentation purposes, and it is a little shorter than the ones I used.

I would recommend around 18" to 24" long, depending on the look you are going for. Shorter will just curl up at the ends, longer you can start to get some curly-cue action going. They are around 5" to 6" wide at the end. You will end up losing any point at the top narrower than half an inch when sewing, so keep the end rounded. I also found that the legs looked best when the bottom piece was narrower than the top, as shown.

Step 3: Make the Legs

Now for the bulk of the work. For each leg, first attach the elastic down the middle of your top pieces using a zig zag stitch to accommodate the stretch. I stretched it most at the end of the leg and less as I continued down, which created a nice effect with the curl focused at the end. The tighter you pull the elastic, the tighter the curl.

Once your elastic is attached, it's time to attach the bottom piece to the top. Lay your bottom piece on your top piece, with the elastic facing down, as shown. Start sewing a little, then stretch out your top piece to align and sew the edges on either side.

With that, voila, your leg is sewn! Turn it right side out, and stuff.

A note about stuffing: if you are making really long, thin legs, use very small pieces of stuffing to start and push them down with a chopstick or something similar. I ran into trouble trying to stuff large pieces in at first, and it sped things up dramatically by just changing my stuffing method.

Now just do that 8 times, and you're done with the hard part!

Step 4: Attach Legs Together

Some of my friends omitted this step and simply safety pinned the legs onto a tutu. If you are in a pinch, this is a great option. However I wanted to keep my legs as a separate piece, so I attached a waistband.

To make the waistband, cut a 2" strip of your face fabric the size of your hips (or widest point to get this on), lay it down with the edge aligned to the closed tops of the legs. Pin your legs evenly along the length of fabric, and sew.

Sew the strip of fabric to itself, to form a circular waistband.

Then fold the strip around to the other side, fold under the edge, and sew again, leaving an opening to thread through elastic at the end. Thread through elastic (you can use a safety pin to make this easy), sew the elastic together, and close up the gap.

This was actually a little more tedious than I expected, but it worked out great. A slightly easier method would be to sew all the legs down to a ribbon and tie them on. Lots of options here depending on what time you want to spend.

Step 5: Make the Hairpiece

This part is SUPER EASY. Glue your pom poms together to make eyes, then glue them to your feather hair clip, and done! The only thing to be aware of here is how your eyes are oriented in relation to your clip. If you plan to attach the clip on top of your head with your hair pulled back, you want the clip to be inline/parallel with the eyes.

If you are having a hard time finding a feather hairclip, you may need to get creative and make the feather clip itself. This would be pretty easy - buy some feathers, glue them to a circular piece of stiff canvas, and glue a clip to the other end.

Step 6: Finished!

Now pull it all together! I wore shorts underneath and a matching top and fishnets. This part is up to you - have fun and enjoy!