If you have kids that are fans of the PBS Kids show, Wild Kratts, then chances are they would love to have their very own “creature power suit”!!! They’d be great for a Halloween costume, for just fun dress-up purposes, or for a Wild Kratts birthday party like we did! 
You could certainly make these much more elaborate than I did–and to be “real” creature power suits, Big Brother quickly pointed out that we needed creature power gloves! LOL! But, if you’re making these for a little one’s birthday party, these DIY suits are not only super easy to make, but rather inexpensive too (less than $5 per suit)!
DIY “No Sew” Creature Power Suits
Supplies:
- black t-shirts (ideally v-neck if you can find them). For the girls (we only had 2), I did pink ones!
- blue & green fabric (I just used a cheap cotton variety)
- circle templates (I cut these out with my Cricut. We had kids ranging in age from 18 months to 5 and I used a 4″ circle for the main paw pad and 1 1/4″ circles for the 3 smaller ones)
- scissors
- Heat N Bond
- iron
- *optional: velcro
Directions:
- First off, start by washing the t-shirts and the fabric you are going to use!
- Measure where on the t-shirt you should cut the bottom off. The shirts I got (at the craft store) were CRAZY long–so put it on your kiddo or measure with one of their other shirts. The vests on the creature power suits are shorter than regular shirts, so I cut a good six inches or more off of the shirts!
- Then, start cutting!!! You’ll cut the bottom off, along with the sleeves. If you want to keep it true to the real suits, then you’ll also cut the neck into a “V” (unless of course you luck out with finding cheap v-neck shirts). It was late though and I was tired, so I skipped this step. The kids still thought they were great & no one even mentioned that they weren’t v-neck!
- Cut out squares of fabric & similar sized squares of the Heat N Bond product. Follow the directions for the Heat N Bond & use your iron accordingly to adhere the Heat N Bond to the fabric. Then, pin your circle template onto your bonded fabric & cut out the circles. (*It was SO much easier to do it this way than to try & cut the circle out first, then adhere the Heat N Bond. Plus, this method resulting in less fraying around the edges of the fabric).
- Once all the circles are cut out, follow the directions to iron-on the bonded fabric to the t-shirt. You could stop there, but they seemed incomplete. On the “real” suits, there are little details on the shoulder and on the sides. Again, I didn’t have it in me to do the sides. But, we did the shoulders. For this, I didn’t use any template. We just followed steps 4 & 5–only this time it was small rectangles!
- *Optional: If you are going to be making creature power discs to go with your suits, then you’ll want velcro in the middle of each large circle. If you do this, make sure you either stitch on the velcro or use glue to make sure it sticks (we didn’t do that and it started falling off the suits once the kids started playing in them).
That’s it!! Just a few simple steps and you have your very own Wild Kratts Creature Power Suits!!
*You can see more from our Wild Kratts party here!
Linked to: *Tatertots & Jello,
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So much FUN… lucky boys!
You always have the greatest ideas. Maybe DIL will let me do a party for my Grandson’s some year. (You know where I’d come for ideas ) Hugs…
Thanks! I’ve been looking for a “no sew” plan to make these suits. I too am DIY’ing a Wild Kratts party for my 5 year old. I only wish I could buy supplies. But a least I know I am not alone!
How fun! There’s very little out to buy anyway, so have fun DIY’ing it! Hope the suits work out well for you!
You are amazing. I am so happy I found your site. Thank you a million times for all the awesome ideas.
Aw,thanks! I’m so glad you found it too! Hope the ideas are helpful for you!
Thank you so much for this idea! It’s perfect. I have a question for you though. Which Heat n bond product did you use? I picked up some today, then noticed it’s vinyl? I’ve never used this sort of thing, and I’m finding out there’s many varieties of it! I also have fabric glue, but not thinking I want to use that much glue.
Thanks!
Hi Christal! Just went & checked my sewing stash for you. Mine is called, “HeatnBond Lite”. It’s “sewable” and says it’s great for lightweight fabrics, machine appliques and quilting. I think many different kinds of HeatnBond will probably work fine though. If you can get the HeatnBond to work right, you shouldn’t need any fabric glue at all. Hope that helped a bit! Good luck!
thank you. thank you. thank you. 5-yr old son only wants to be “Martin” for fall festivities. This is a life saver!
So glad you found this then, Sarah!
Hope he loves his Martin costume! 
My daughter LOVES wild kratts and wants a costume for Christmas. My 2 yr old daughter is starting to get into it too.
I am glad you’ve made it easy for me!
Thank you, thank you — my son is a huge Wild Kratts fan and I’m sure he’ll be ecstatic with the creature power suit I’m going to make him for Xmas using your instructions. You are a life saver!
So glad you found this then, Lucy!
Thanks for the sweet comment! Hope he loves his Creature Power suit! 
Simply fabulous! Now all I need is the time–and courage–to attempt a feat like this! At least I won’t have to sew…always a good thing! In agreement with all the other moms of Wild Kratts Fans, thank you for posting…looove the idea!
Aw, thanks, Ami! Glad you found the post! You can do it!!!
Am I not understanding my heat and bond directions correctly? Once I bonded the fabric to it there’s no way to iron it on the tshirt? Im currently sewing them on but this is going to take much longer than Id hoped. Help?
Janna,
With the heat ‘n bond that I had, I adhered one side to the fabric for the circles. Then cut those out. Once cut, you peel the backing off the circles and just iron it to the shirt. So, not sure where it’s going wrong for you.
do you think its possible to use black felt instead of the t shirts? I can’t find them cheap enough and would love to make 2 dozen for our twins party goers:) also I am not very crafty so I dont know if the felt would “hold up” to the bonding of the paw prints and velco for “creature powers” circles…my boys LOOOOVe the show and all the animals…Oh yeah elephant bouncey booked:)
Hi Tanya,
Honestly, I think that would be a lot of work & don’t think it would hold up well. But, 2 dozen shirts is a lot, so it’s completely understandable that the cost would add up. I wonder if there is a place online where you could buy tshirts in bulk cheap??