DIY Young Maleficent Fairy Costume

After watching Disney’s Maleficent I was surprised that there hadn’t been an official costume for Young Malefient, or Isobelle Molloy’s version of the young impish, care-free Moors fairy.

Seeing the need for the costume, I did a breakdown of Young Maleficent’s dress, makeup, hair and accessories, originally at the Young Maleficent Movie Costume lens on Squidoo. There are suggestions for modifying and embellishing existing clothes or making the costume.

This woods fairy costume is one that is popular with young girls and tween fans of the Maleficent Movie. I think there will be a lot of Moors fairies running around for Halloween.

Making a Young Maleficent Fairy Costume

The younger, girl version of her attire for the movie is part fairy, elf, animal and woodland creature.

She looks a bit like a brown fairy, except she has large strong, brown feather wings. She looks like a bit like an elf or a pixie with her small pointed ears. Of course you can’t miss the large brown horns growing out of the top of her head like a wild animal (kudu, antelope or ram).

The costuming team did a great job in making her clothing and jewelry look like it has been made from what she could find in the forest—moss, bark, twigs and berries.

Young Maleficent Images from Disney’s Maleficent.

Items for a Young Maleficent Movie Costume

Her costume can be constructed using a basic brown dress, a set of feathered wings, horns, a brown wig, wooden bead necklace and matching bracelet and attaching a brown leather pouch.

Here is the breakdown of the parts of the Young Maleficent Costume. The materials or items needed for her outfit include:

Horns
Medium brunette wig
Pixie ears
Small Hair Braid
Face makeup and lipgloss
Maleficent nails
Brown tunic or tank dress
Feather wings – ideally brown
Leather with wooden beads necklace and bracelet
Leather treasure pouch
Brown ballet slippers (she’s actually barefooted in the film)

Some of the accessories you may need to purchase for the Young Maleficent Costume include different styles of horns, wings and pixie ears. You can find many of these on Amazon:

Modifying or Repurposing a Young Maleficent Costume Dress

Proud Young Maleficent — A Proud Young Fairy with Strong Wings

One thrifty way to fashion the costume is by using clothes you may already have, those you can find in a thrift store or even using an old brown shirt (or dyed white shirt) and restyling it into a shabby looking woodland dress.

Two dress that I found on Amazon could be modified for a tween or teen sized costume. You may want to sponge paint on a mixture of brown and green to get more of the color and texture of the wood fairy’s dress and find a piece of fabric with a raw edge that can be frayed to put around the arm holes and the neckline.

Making a Young Maleficent Costume Dress

Young Maleficent Close up Dress — Young Maleficent’s Dress Close up

Since she lives in the woods in the Moors her clothing looks like it has been made from what can be found in the woods: moss, bark, twigs and berries. The colors are in shades of the forest brown (bark) and olive or moss green.

Dress Design

If you look at the close up of the dress you can see that the design is a simple empire waist line, with the seam right under the bustline. The skirt part of the dress looks to be made up of three different sections, but this could also be lines drawn or painted in to look like bark. The sleeves extend out from the bodice to make a very small cap.

One of the additional detailing of the dress is that the edges of the cap sleeves and the neckline are frayed. On the sleeves the fraying appears to be instead of the normal hem, while the neckline has a frayed detailing on top of it. Create a frayed detailing for the neckline by using a starting with a 2 inch strip of fabric and ripping both edges to get the fraying effect. Once the fabric has been torn just stitch it into place at the neckline.

Young Maleficent Images from Disney’s Maleficent. See Disney Maleficent on Facebook.

Fabric

The fabric looks like a polyester, chiffon, silk or silk fabric; if you are making the dress choose a fabric that tear and fray without falling apart. The color of the fabric used for her dress looks to be custom with a dyed or texture-painted in brown and olive to give the impression of colors that she would have available to her bark and moss.

Possible fabric choices would use using a crinkled or crushed taffeta to create some of the decorative interest in the fabric. Finding a mossy-brown fabric may be challenging, so you can start with a brown or green and sponge paint or dye the other color depending on if you want more of a brown base or a green base. Another possible fabric choice is to find a nature or camouflage cotton print, which would fray nicely for the arm and neckline.

Fabric.com…Sew Something!

Potential Sewing Patterns

If you are interested in making the dress (or having it made) one of the best patterns with the empire waist line for the girl and tween sizes in Butterick B3714. Another one with the empire waist is an old one McCall’s 9534 that you might be able to find on eBay.

Adult patterns that could be used for teen (or adult versions) are McCall’s Patterns M6031 below and Kwik Sew K3611. The McCall’s M6031 versions C (orange dress) and D (teal dress) has more fullness in the bottom part of the dress where as the B (peach dress) is much flatter. The Kwik Sew K3611 (not seen) is a simple pullover tunic dress and probably the easiest to sew but would need to have cap sleeves added.

Butterick B3714 Girls’ Dress,
Size 7-8-10 and 12-14-16

McCall’s M6031
Misses’ Tunics And Dresses

FREE SHIPPING on orders $35+ from Fabric.com

To keep the page from getting too long, I am splitting up the information on the costume. Look for more information on her horns, makeup, hair and nails and her accessories (necklace, bracelet and treasure pouch) on these related pages:

Costume Breakdown History

This costume breakdown tutorial was originally featured as the Young Maleficent Movie Costume lens on Squidoo now on HubPages.