After taking a class on Greek history, my son came to me and asked to be a Spartan Warrior for Halloween this year. I figured it was better than the other black robed creepy things he was thinking of dressing up as, so we started on this DIY Halloween costume!
I used hot glue for assembly so it wasn’t as complicated as it may look to put together. Here are the pieces of the costume; some were handmade, some I bought to save time (affiliate links):
- DIY Spartan Warrior Skirt (instructions below)
- Spartan Warrior cloak pin
- 2 yards red fabric
- Man’s white t-shirt
- Spartan helmet
- Spartan sword and shield
- Spartan arm guards
- Thrifted gladiator sandals
So fierce! He’s pretty excited to bring this little bit of history alive. Although it was really really rough being a Spartan Warrior–they started training before they were 10!
DIY Spartan Warrior Skirt
This skirt was cut out on my Cricut Maker, but you can see what I did here and do something similar by hand. The design is not really complicated. If you aren’t using a Cricut, use nail head studs to decorate your skirt with. I purchased these to do just that, but the iron-on option was far easier.
Make your own Spartan Warrior costume, starting with a Spartan Warrior skirt. Inexpensive faux leather was easy to work with to create this skirt, but other materials will work just as well. Open the Spartan Warrior costume design file. Cut the pieces in the file. The brown and grey are for the faux leather, the gold the SportFlex iron-on. There is an option to deboss the leather included, but it is option. Delete from the file if you are not going to use. The long rectangular piece will fold in half so the holes line up. Eventually the holes will lace the two sides of the skirt together. With the rectangle open wrong side up, place the narrow tips of the hanging strips onto the rectangle. Four strips should fit in snugly along the length. Once the strips are arranged, use hot glue to attach them to the rectangle. Fols the rectangle in half, lining up the holes. Use hot glue to secure. The Spartans were actually know for being, well--Spartan. But they did occasionally decorate their armor. We took a little liberty here and added some Greek-inspired symbols. I used my EasyPress Mini to iron the Gold SportFlex to the band of the skirt and to the ends of the hanging leather strips. Twenty seconds per press was plenty to get the vinyl to adhere to the faux leather. Lacing the Skirt There was no way to make the Cricut cut out a piece long enough to wrap around my son's waist entirely, so I split the design in two and added a little extra detail I think makes the costume look even better. The holes line up so that a strip of leather lacing can be woven through to hold the skirt together. Of course, when we took this picture, my son was in a hurry to get back to the video games so he might not have done a great job tying his skirt on securely. ((That could have been embarrasing later!)) The lacing also allows a little leeway for sizing. If your child is within a few inches of five feet tall, the pattern should be fine to use as-is. If they're a little larger (or smaller) you can scale the pattern up and down within Design Space to fit. As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, I earn from qualifying purchases.
DIY Spartan Warrior Costume
Materials
Tools
Instructions
Cutting out the Skirt
Assembling the Spartan Warrior Costume
Spartan Warrior Accents
Recommended Products
Spartan Warrior cloak pin and cape
For reference, my son is just shy of 5 feet tall. For the cape, two yards of red fabric was draped around his shoulders and pinned with a Spartan Warrior cloak pin I picked up on Amazon. Any pin probably would do, but the lambda on this one made it feel a little more authentic. The fabric almost brushed the ground, so I likely could have done with 1 3/4 yards for the cape. Pick up a heavier weight fabric in knit for nice draping.
Spartan Tunic
This was my favorite part. I went into my husband’s t-shirt drawer and picked this up. A man’s white t-shirt works perfectly as a tunic for a little boy.
Spartan helmet, sword and shield
Could these have been a DIY project? Yes. Was there time for that? Not a chance. Buy the shield and sword as a set and the helmet here. And yes, the listing says it’s Roman, but the Greeks were the ones who opted for that particular style of face shield. Mom did the research and the kid verified.
If you order this Spartan helmet–it may be a little big for your child. At least that was our experience. To solve the problem, we taped bubble wrap to the inside of the helmet to get it to fit snug and comfortable for costume use.
Spartan Arm Guards
I absolutely could have made these very fancy and embellished like the Spartan Warrior skirt. I ran out of time, but these work brilliantly.
Two scraps of that faux leather were wrapped around the forearm and tied to the arm with suede leather lacing. EASY.
Thrifted gladiator sandals
Turns out, a boy’s size 5 shoe is equal to a Women’s size 7. Rather than have some fakey looking sandals we rigged up, I went to the thrift store and found a pair of gladiator sandals that will work for an evening. We’ll re-donate them after Halloween is over!
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