The raw materials for the wings can all be found at the thrift:
- Red shirt (or any other red cloth)
- Yellow shirt (or any other yellow cloth)
- Large pair of black pants (like the largest you can find)
- All black clothes (for underneath)

Tools I used are:
- Scissors/Rotary Cutter
- Sewing needles & Embroidery Floss
- Optional: Sewing machine

Also for the beak I just used a medical mask and black paper. Google how to make a bird beak its ez.

Putting the wings together was suprisingly easy - it really was as simple as cutting out the shapes and sticking them together.

I started with the shoulder pads, cutting out the basic shape from my red shirt and tracing them onto the yellow shirt to make the golden band beneath it. Because the shirts were pretty thin, by layering the red and yellow you get some nice rigidity in the shoulders.

For the pants, I was suprised by just how much cloth are in them. By cutting the inseam and zipper, I was able to get a rough wing shape from each leg, which only needed a little shaping to get to the final product.

After cutting the legs into proper wing shapes, the last step is assembly. I thought I would be able to glue all the pieces together using fabric glue (I still think this is possible) but either due to my poor application or the years-old glue I was using from the university makerspace, adhesion was not achieved. Instead, I sewed everything together using a sewing machine, first sewing each layer of the shoulder pads together (using yellow thread over the red for some nice texturing), then sewing the wings together where they connected in the back. After checking where the shoulder pads looked correct, I pinned them down and sewed them on. Add off cuts as a neck tie and boom!

For the beak, I just followed an online tutorial and made it out of black construction paper and a medical mask. You can also just use a black medical mask for this!

When wearing, I found using safety pins to attach the wings to your shirt, as well as pinning the corner of the wing to itself to make a hole for your arm made it a dream to wear, and I highly recomend this method.

I really liked how this turned out! It is nice to wear, oddly warm in the face of October gusts, and totally sick. I totally recommend you making your own red-winged blackbird costume!

After wearing this out for holloween night, I was suprised by how few people knew not only what I was, but what a red-winged blackbird is entirly. Good thing I was out there to spread the good word - I just hope my words about birds survive in their memory after the large amounts of pink whitney. I met a fellow bird though - a common loon (one of my other favorites!). Also like the whole cast of Rocky Horror went crazy over it so I call that a win.

- keeperofhoney, November 2025