“Oh no, I have an idea,” is something I often say when I see something someone is wearing, and I want to own and wear it too. This is not about the popular brands, designer suits, or latest fashion, but rather, when Fall Out Boy comes on The Tonight Show as Cluck Cluck Boy and clucks along to it. I, in fact, said, “Oh no, I have an idea.”

I had already gone to many of Fall Out Boy’s So Much (For) Tourdust shows in costumes I created, so it wasn’t such an outrageous thought in my mind. It was more so, how do I do this?

If you build it, they will come. Or rather if I make it, it needs to be concert-practical.

I am not trained in any proper sewing techniques, but I have had a sewing machine since I was 8. With trial and error, I have made many things, including pants for a friend’s birthday in middle school. That’s normal, right?

Where do we start? I needed to be able to take it off and on easily, and it needed to scream not just chicken, but Cluck Cluck Boy.It needed to be very specific colors, and the same style of chicken. If you do a quick Google search of chicken suits, nothing compares.

Close, but no eggs!

I knew I wanted it to be a jacket and not an entire head-to-toe chicken suit. So I started with a jacket: something very light, because I will be sweating at concerts, and we add some pizzazz, some flavor, some Fall Out Boy. A zip up hoodie would be the best option for a show because the hood, used as the chicken head, could be taken off and easily worn, and the zip up aspect would help keep me warm when needed, but it would still give off “chicken” if unzipped.

The original Cluck Cluck Boy costumes looked fluffy and fuzzy rather than made of feathers, and I wanted to be that soft, too. If I want a specific texture, I’m going to have to make the jacket with a specific fabric. I can go to any fabric store to get shag fur like material, but I’ll need a lot of fabric to wrap around my body. I went with buying a throw blanket instead, and tearing it to shreds. Blankets are usually $20 and sometimes on sale. If you get a good coupon at a fabric store, you can get a great deal — this just worked for this project. Plus, I know how soft these blankets are (as I own many myself), and I wanted to be a soft, huggable chicken.

To make a pattern, I took the thin, yellow zip-up jacket I bought for this project, laid it on parchment paper, and then traced the jacket’s quadrants. This included: the arm (back and front, pinned right at the sewn seam), the back, the front two sides, and the hood from both sides. With the parchment pattern, I was able to alter the measurements I knew that fit, because I knew I would want the arms to be more “flappy” and wing-like. I extended the bottom part of the arm on the pattern to hang, which created a slight winged sleeve. I did NOT cut two separate pieces for each wing, but rather, I used the parchment pattern to trace one side and then flipped it to mirror directly next to it, and cut it out as one large, butterflied wing. 

I tore apart the blanket, which had a crushed velvet fabric on the underbelly that was saved to be used later for the chicken hands, and I was able to arrange all the parchment patterns over the blanket/fabric to utilize it to the fullest. All the parchment pattern pieces fit on one blanket! I used pins to hold the parchment patterns in place, and then cut the fabric with a one inch (1”) bias to leave room for sewing. 

For the chicken hands, I knew I wanted them to be wearable and removable for easy access to my human hands without fully taking off the jacket. The concept inspiration for this was those little fingerless mittens that have little tops attached. 

To make the chicken hands, I just made a pattern with my own hand. I traced my hand, in a “live long and prosper” pose, and then traced that onto some leftover blanket fabric. I chose to give my chicken 3 fingers instead of 5 because it felt more animated, and thus, more chicken-y, but instead of the seam at the fingers, I did the seam at the wrists. I made the chicken wing/sleeves first, and then the chicken hands, and just attached them at the top of the wrist. That way, I could slip in and out of full chickendom.

I used that crushed velvet fabric leftover from the underbelly of the blanket for the palms of the chicken hands. I sewed the two fabrics inside out, made the fingers more triangular, and VOILA: chicken hands! 

I did the same inside out sewing technique for the wing/arm/sleeves. Of course, that creates very thin sleeves — that’s where the jacket comes into play. I could get additional fabric and make a lining inside the sleeves and the rest of the jacket, but why do that when I already have a functional jacket I used for the initial pattern I attached each sleeve to the top of the shoulders on the jacket, then pinned  and sewed it down. The main thing to consider when doing this is the orientation of the sewing — I lined up the sewn seam in the armpit so it would be hidden under the arm. The great thing about this shag fur fabric is that it hides all stitches.

Sewing on the back and front panels were as simple as wrapping it around the jacket. The pattern we drew out earlier helped wrap around the hoodie and rounded areas. I started where the zipper was, so I could line that up perfectly without the zipper getting jammed. 

I knew I wanted to have the Cluck Cluck Boy logo on the back. I was making this official.

There was no official artwork for the definitely real American Rock Band Cluck Cluck Boy, but they did have a mash up of a logo on a kick drum. I wanted that logo. 

With the help of a font search engine on Google, I was able to upload the photo of the kick drum to narrow down a real font that looked similar enough to it. Arranging it around Fall Out Boy’s yin and yang smiley frown, which was easy to find and get a decent render of, was next, then putting it all in a circle and firing up the Cricut machine. If you’ve ever worked with a Cricut, it’s pretty simple to do any sort of iron on patch. Just make sure you set the machine to mirrored. I ironed it onto some old black shirt I had and would have probably been sacrificed to the “bleaching my hair” wardrobe if not for this project. This created a homemade patch that I could then easily sew into place on the back of the chicken jacket

I added the hood fabric next, in the same wrap around and sew method, knowing I wanted to embellish with the chicken face details afterwards

We are fluffy, we are soft, we are yellow, we are 75% chicken.

When I look at Cluck Wentz, Andrew Cluckly, and Clucktrick Stump up close, I could get an idea of how I wanted the beak and comb to look, and I was going to simply make that out of $0.25 bright orange felt.

The comb was easy, just a little well-planned doodle and a cut out, hot glue to keep it in place, and epoxy glue to keep it forever. The beak took some trial and error. I wanted it to be 3D, but also not annoying on top of my head. I wish I had photos of the process of this, but it really was just making different sized triangles and glueing them together until I got a shape that resembled a beak. I pinned it to the center of the hood, did a quick sew to hold it in place, and then epoxy glued that to stay forever, because  we are not losing a beak in the pit.

The eyes were teddy bear eyes from a craft store. I picked the biggest ones I could find because I knew they might get lost in the fluff, and I once again epoxy’d them in place. E6000 really is holding my life together at this point. 

I added some feather flourish, sewing orange feathers down when I did the hood. 

I like to be bagless at shows, so I had sewn a little pocket on the inside of the jacket using a zipper from Daiso and leftover fabric from the black shirt used for the back patch. I made this the size of my phone, because that and some cards were all I needed. 

After that final touch, the Cluck Cluck Boy jacket was done! 

As for the rest of the costume, I wanted it to be as comfy as possible. I purchased a yellow bodysuit and bright orange leggings. I have reused these leggings many times because luckily, my favorite color is orange. 

I’ve gotten a lot of use from this costume, it’s been my go-to for last minute Fall Out Boy shows because, who doesn’t want to be a chicken?