How to Sew the Perfect Hulk Costume

Welcome back to Everything’s Famtastic! Do you know what’s fantastic about today? The sun is shining! Never mind that it was 0 degrees when I walked Master 5 to kindergarten this past week. The sun was shining like the massive fireball that it is, coming up over the horizon. So glorious to see! *happy dance*

Do you know what else is generating excitement around here? The upcoming Karneval celebration! Here in Germany it’s spelled Karneval, other places around the world Carnival. While big cities in Germany like Cologne have massive parades to celebrate Karneval, our town here does a pretty decent job of it too.

Karneval tends to mean two things: costumes and sweets! In today’s post I wanted to focus on the costume side of things. Specifically: how to sew a child’s Hulk Costume. Hubby and I were sick of forking out money every single year for Karneval as well as months later for a new Halloween costume. Do that for each of the 3 kids and it can quickly get expensive, you know? So, solution identified: Sew them myself!

Read on below to find out how you can sew a Hulk costume too 😊 Sweets you’ll just have to organise for yourself! 😉

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning that I get a small commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you.

The Hulk Costume

So, let’s get stuck right into the costume-sewing-thing that you are here for! This Hulk costume I made for our Master 5. It wasn’t too difficult at all, although admittedly it can get a little fiddly when it comes to making the muscles. I ended up sewing 4 items to make the outfit look complete:

Green Muscle Shirt

Green Trousers

Purple Shorts

Eye-Mask

Although I would love to take the credit for being the awesomely creative and innovative chick who developed the patterns for these pieces, I have to admit that I am not. I did however sew the pieces you can see here in my photos and produced this awesome looking costume. Also, I thought it would be helpful for you to have all the information for sewing these 4 pieces in one convenient place along with some step-by-step photos. So…

What you’ll need to make this 4-piece Hulk outfit

Your favourite pattern for a child’s long-sleeve Shirt. I used a Shirt pattern from this book Klimperklein which I think is only available in German and sadly not in English. But there are plenty of other children’s Shirt patterns available online or in books if you speak kein Deutsch 😉. But just don’t sew it yet!!

Pattern to create the muscles and the stretch fabric to make them! The fabric doesn’t have to be green, as it will end up inside the shirt and won’t actually be seen (although using matching green does look *more professional*). I found this nifty printable pattern for muscles here from Blogger I’m Feelin’ Crafty. This pattern size is for a child approximately 5 years old. Which- huzzah for me!- my son is. But the pattern could easily be copied smaller or larger to suit your own little superhero.

Your favourite pattern for a child’s Trousers. I actually used the pattern for pyjama pants in that same Klimperklein book. But you could easily also use a pattern for leggings or trackpants. There are no rules here, people! Let your creativity flow!

Pattern for Hulk’s purple Shorts. You can use your favourite pattern for shorts or trackpants and cut them to the desired length. I actually found some greet fleece in my large collection of waiting-to-be-used fabric. The outside of the fleece fabric was actually not purple, but lucky for me the inside was! Voila! Inside-out, fleecy purple shorts. Just don’t tell my son that the insides are pink-ish 😉

Pattern for the Hulk Eye Mask which you can download from Blogger Cutesy Crafts . Although she suggests using felt to create the mask, I made my mask using leftover pieces of the green fabric I had used for sewing the shirt and trousers. I then found some very fine black felt to use as padding between the 2 green layers and for the hair and eyebrows.

The Basics: sewing machine, matching-coloured thread, pins, scissors, tailor’s chalk/marker, elastic (2cm/ 1in. wide) for the waistband in the trousers, stuffing for the “muscles” (I used this), felt  and narrow elastic (1cm/ 0.5in.) for the eye mask and of course enough stunning, Hulk-y green goodness stretch/jersey fabric as needed for the muscles plus your Shirt and Trousers patterns.

What’s cool about the patterns for this costume is that you can make them into any superhero you want! You little one is not a fan of the Hulk but likes Captain America? Sew it in blue! No, wait! Spiderman is better? Sew it in red!  Can you see the possibilities here?!?

Start sewing your own Hulk!

I’m going to mainly focus on the muscle Shirt, because that really is the highlight of this outfit! Once your little one puts this shirt on, they’ll believe the sky’s the limit at dress-up time!

I have included a lot of photos below, to make it mega clear what you need to do at each step. Ready? Set? Start your sewing machine and SEW!

Step 1:

Using your Trousers pattern, cut out the required pieces of your green fabric and stitch together following the instructions. These will be the Hulk’s “legs”.

Step 2:

Following your Shirt instructions, cut out the pieces you will need, using that glorious green stretch fabric. But remember… Do not sew yet!

Step 3:

Print out the Muscles patterns  and cut out the paper patterns (upper arms and abs).

Step 4:

Pin the paper patterns onto your stretch fabric. Note that both the upper arms and the abs need to be cut on the fold! You will probably have enough green material left over once you have cut out all the pieces you need for the Shirt and the Trousers. (I had almost enough matching green fabric left to make all of the muscles and found a little other green fabric to make the rest.) You’ll need to cut 4 pieces on the fold for the upper arms and 2 pieces on the fold for the abs.

Step 5:  

Pin together 2 upper arms pieces of fabric. Repeat with the other 2 upper arms pieces. Pin together the 2 pieces of fabric for the abs. Mark each of the set with the outline of the muscles, as seen on the paper muscle patterns.

Step 6:

Being sure to leave a 5cm (2in.) gap for the filling, use zig-zag stitching to sew around the outside of each of these 3 “muscle packs”.

Step 7:

Using a straight stitch, sew along the outermost edges only of each of the upper arm muscles and abs. This starts to give the muscles their nice shape! They should now look like these:

Step 8:

Use the stuffing to fill up all 3 of the “muscle packs” as much or as little as you wish. For example the abs should now look like this:

Step 9:

Using straight stitch sew the final line of muscles across the upper arms. Pin the 5cm gap closed and using zig-zag stitch to sew the “pack” closed.

Step 10:

Using straight stitch finish sewing along each of the lines marked on the abs “muscle packet”. You will now have a lovely, toned set of green abs in front of you! To complete, pin together opening and sew closed using zigzag stitch.

Step 11:

Admire completed muscles! OK, now back to work 😉…

Step 12:

Pin an upper arm “muscles pack” to the inside of each sleeve you already cut out from your Shirt pattern.

Step 13:

Using straight stitch sew over each of the defining lines of the muscles to create the perfect muscle form. The sleeves will now look like this from the outside:

Step 14:

Pin the abs “muscles pack” onto the inside of the front piece of the Shirt. I had previously sewn the front and back pieces together at the shoulders, just so I could get a better feel for where to place the abs. But feel free to choose which order you do these steps.

Step 15:

Like with the arms, using a straight stitch sew directly over each of the muscle lines to create the perfect 6 pack. The front of the shirt should now look like this:

Step 16:

Finally, follow the instructions with your Shirt pattern to finish sewing the long-sleeve Shirt together. Hooray! Great job!

Step 17:

Follow your chosen instructions to cut out and sew the purple Hulk Shorts. Any easy, loose-fitting, no-pockets, no-fuss shorts will look great! Like I noted above, I just found some old fleece which happened to be purple on the inside 😉. Have fun hacking at the lower edge to create that shredded, just-burst-out-of-these-trousers look!

Step 18:

Download the Eye Mask pattern from Cutesy Crafts, print and cut out. Sew the mask following the instructions provided. And as mentioned above, instead of using felt I used up the rest of the green stretch fabric 😉.

So, there you have it! A very impressive Hulk Costume. Here’s my little Hulk, trying to look fierce and intimidating.

Your little superhero will love it too. Though beware- this costume is so cool you may get requests from other kids to sew them one as well!

So tell me, how did your Hulk costume turn out? Have you sewn costumes for your kids (or yourself 😉) before? Which one are you most proud of?