How to make a mermaid tail from a tablecloth

I recently made a Mermaid Tail from a disposable tablecloth for World Book Day. Here’s how.

You need:

a disposable tablecloth: mine was paper with a plastic back

bubble wrap

a few cupcake cases

lots of double-sided sticky tape

Velcro dots

Firstly, I measured my daughter from waist to floor (length). And then I measured around her waist with a 15cm overlap (width). I cut a rectangle from the tablecloth using these measurements.

I then folded it in half width-ways, and trimmed it. I cut a wedge about 3/4 of the way down- I cut in about 3/4 of the width too, then I trimmed up and out in a curve in both directions. This will make the body and tail fins.

I folded over a very narrow “seam” across the waist of the tail and stuck down with sticky tape.

I cut strips- about 6cm wide) from the bubble wrap roll that were as long as the tail was wide, then I cut scale shapes along one edge. I repeated this about 15 times. Then I used the tape to stick these rows of scales- bubble side up- on to the tail. Start at the bottom, above what will be the fins, and add each new row so that it overlaps the previous row and is off-centre (a bit like brick-laying!) to it, so that the round edge of each scale sat roughly across the gap between scales on the previous row.

Once I had layered bottom to top, I trimmed the edges. You could just leave it like this, but I added cupcake cases, flattened and cut in half, randomly dotted and placed under the bubble-wrap scales. Mine were turquoise, a sea green and some silver too.

Lastly, I made the fins. Firstly, I cut up through the centre of the fin section, about halfway. Then I grabbed one of the fins in my hand, fiddled with it a bit so that it looked pretty, then held it in place with washi tape (you could use a hairband or elastic band.) I repeated on the other side, trying to get the two fins looking even. Finally I bound then two together.

Lastly, when I had my daughter to hand, I fixed two sets of Velcro dots on the waist of the tail so that the tail would be held snuggly in place.

We also added a shell bikini-  a strip of leftover tablecloth that I tied on over her clothes. This was embellished with two shell shapes cut from silver bubblewrap (the kind that insulates cold shopping) but you could use felt. The shells were decorated with glitter and stick on jewels.

We also used real beach shells to make a quick shell necklace and to embellish a headband.

These costumes (headband and necklace aside) were not designed to last, although one survived the day very well and is in our dressing up box. But they survived the day and were a quick solution to a costume drama.