Moana Costume

I am always getting compliments on my daughter Jhenaea's hair. As the new Disney movie Moana trailers have been showing, a lot of people started to say she looked like Moana. She's also half Polynesia (Samoan) so it seemed fitting. I actually had no clue that there was an actual costume released by Disney since the movie had not been released yet. I knew I could do it with a bit of searching.

What was used and how I made it?
I bought a little hula skirt get up at the Aloha Stadium Swap meet. It came with the grass skirt, lil coconut bra, shell lei and a fake flower.

I used the hula skirt and trimmed it to fit her just at the knees. I put aside the shell lei to use as embellishment on the top.

I got 3 pieces of fabric from the local Fabric Mart. 1/2 yard of the Red print, 3/4 yard of the Tapa (woven mat) print and a fat quarters of orangish/yellow for accents.

Fit the red around her to measure out the top, folded a crease to create some depth sewed up the edges. I used 2-1/2" magnetic clasps to secure her top. Being all of 35lbs I ended up adding some thin straps to hold the top up. Used the shell lei and placed stitches in random areas to hold it in place.

Next I measured the Tapa fabric around her and cut 2 separate pieces. One that was just a bit shorter than the grass skirt and one about a quarter length shorter than the first. I used the woven patterns to count out little triangles to mimic the bottom of Moana's tapa skirt. I sewed both pieces together at the top and finished triangles along the bottom of both pieces. In the image, Moana's tapa has cut outs in the triangles. I used a brown sharpie to color in those spots. I cut out little flowers from the yellow/orange fabric and added those. To finish that I used a scrap from the red fabric to use as the "belt" I stitched it on to the skirt so we wouldn't lose it.

For her spear/paddle I found a Polynesian hand weapon sometimes called a "Nifo Oti". It was light weight and about $5 also from the swapmeet. I removed the raffia wrapped around the handle hot glued and duct tapped the handle to a thick cardboard roll I got from the inside of an outdoor rug I bought prior. I then painted the entire thing brown. Then I rewrapped the raffia around the duct taped area.

The necklace was a bday gift from her aunt, she got it while at Disneyland.

Other than that, her hair is basically like this if left alone for most of the day :).

The reactions we got were amazing. She was stopped during trick or treating to take pictures about 4 times. I was surprised that just about everyone we encountered knew who she was. One little girl would not stop hugging her.

The photos I shared with family and friends on Facebook and instagram are spreading like wildfire. People have tagged The Rock and Auli'i Cravalho who is the voice of Moana. 3 of her photos were "liked" on instagram by @DisneysMoana. Seems like it is just about "viral".