Amelia Earhart Costume with Conifer Jacket.

What is going on? A homemade costume on my blog and we are months and months away from halloween.

A biography project in school and a sold out costume is what happened! 

Halloween 2015 - Girl Musketeer.

I feel like the older the kids get the faster time goes.

We were well into October before I realized that we really needed 'the talk'.....the one where we took the final and unchangeable decision on halloween costumes that is, hehe. 

This girl musketeer costume has seriously been one of the most fun things I have sewed in a long time. It was one of those lucky projects that just worked. Sometimes you rip every seam and sometimes things are just flying along.....this was the last kind which is probably why it ended up much more elaborate than I originally planned. I don't think I ripped a single seam during this project. Which is not normal for me...in case you wondered, ha.

When E decided she wanted to be a musketeer (after getting a mask with a big feather - I'm still mystified on how she made that connection. She says "she just knew.") I of course started googling for inspiration. I found a pretty good girl musketeer costume but I was too cheap to buy it SO I went to Jo-Ann and bought materials for nearly the same amount. Great! Of course this is way more fun plus it is hopefully sewed a bit more long lasting and with a perfect fit.

I realized I needed a dress pattern with a basic bodice plus a circle skirt as a starting point and since An from StraighGrain has just relaunched her Tinny Dress pattern (with more sizes and endless new and amazing details and variations) that pattern was the first one that came to mind and it was the perfect base!

I just drew a line (and added seam allowance) on the front bodice for the center insert plus I added the gathered extra skirt piece and sleeve flounces (both self-drafted).

 Easy peasy!

And then I drafted a cape pretty much out of the blue and how I imagined the shape to be. In other words, it was not difficult and didn't involved much math or technicalities.

Since the outer layer of the cape is made form stretch velvet and the inner layer is a much thinner and non-stretchy viscose lining, the outer layer becomes a bit longer when it is hanging vertically. I should have made the outer layer a tiny bit shorter but I didn't, ha. It's really not that much and it is only center back and I can totally live with it. I hope you can too, hehe.

It is only for her back and it is attached with velcro on the back side of the shoulder seams.

I might be overprotective but it feels good to know that if the cape catches on to anything it will just be ripped of instead of potentially choking her.

After seeing this photos - more specifically the hem of the cape, especially left side - I had to go back and look at the actual cape because in the photo it looks crazy bulky and gathered and just plain awful and I didn't remember any of that happened while making it. And I do not know why it looks like this in the photo (maybe something with velvet and the way it catches the light??) but you just have to take my word for it because it looks fine and smooth in real life. Haha, I just needed to let you know!

The leather belt was a bit of an afterthought. She needed a loop for the foil (in between fencing matches you know. Or maybe to have hands free to shovel in candy while trick or treating) and it was easier to tie a string to a belt than sewing it into the dress' waist seam and it adds a great contrast to the fancy dress if you ask me.

Another detail is the musketeer 'boots'. I bought some knee high black socks. Then I sewed a flounce on a 2 cm wide elastic measured to fit under her knees, added a square gold 'buckle' made from gold pleather and boom, you got faux musketeer boots.

The hat is mine and with a gold ribbon, a wild turkey feather from our last vacation and a hand drawn fleur-de-lis cut in gold pleather it became the perfect musketeer hat.

She is thrilled with her costume and she loooves her fencing foil.

This silly girl is SO ready for halloween!

I'm off, I have another costume to finish and this one is in a WHOLE different direction.

Thank you!

Wolf Costume - Halloween 2014

Yup, there is a wolf on my blog.....

W wanted to dress up as a wolf for halloween (I think she got that idea after our visit to Great Wolf Lodge, ha) and even though I showed her a great costume online for $38, she wanted me to sew it. Dang, they know what buttons to press, right. How can you say no to that!?!

I was totally dreading it because I don't enjoy making costumes but who knew that a trip to JoAnn's would turn that around!

I arrived early monday morning and they had just opened. There were barely any customers and the employees were more than happy to help - and I did not even have to wait to get it.

At home I had seen this perfect brown/grey fake fur fabric and their website said it was in stock in my local shop.....except it was nowhere to be found when I arrived. Back to the help that was willing and accessible......she knew exactly what I was talking about and went out back and checked the fabric they were unloading from a truck right that moment and came back with a giant roll of EXCATLY-WHAT-I-WAS-LOOKING-FOR....and it was on sale. Yeeeees.

She also informed me that some of their patterns was on sale for 99 cents and I started looking around and found THIS pattern from McCalls.....not that much on sale but pretty much what I was imagining drafting myself - but why in the world do that when someone had done the job for me!! (Except when I came home I realized I accidentally bought a adult size L and not the kids size 6-7-8 like I needed - silly me thought you got ALL the pattern sizes in one envelope). Oh well, that is why we have Amazon Prime and two days later I received the pattern in the right size....and I was started to feel at bit excited....because this could actually be quite an awesome costume, ha.

The only changes I did to the pattern (besides making it quite a bit more narrow) was to add the white contrast piece to her belly, draft a wolf tale pattern piece, add white felt 'claws' to the tip of the spats (I learned a new English word there!) and to the gloves plus I also made the gloves fingerless. The fingerless part was actually W's own idea which I thought was kind of genius so she can way easier do what you do on Halloween.....open candy :-)

Yup, we did some face paint too. I can't draw at all (okay, I probably do not even have to explain that small detail after this shot above haha) but we have a little book that followed the face paint set we once bought and luckily there was an example of a wolf too, phew.

The hood is separate and closes at the front of her neck with velcro. I put some grey knit inside to make it comfortable. The suit itself is unlined and mostly with raw seams.

It was actually super nice for once just throw all intentions about nice finishes etc out the window and just SEW....fast and easy....ahhhh. 

Maybe I do enjoy sewing costumes a tiny little bit now.

And in case you wonder what Littlesister is going to wear this year you can see it HERE.

If I was really cool I would of course have convinced her to be Little Red Riding Hood but hence the not-loving-to-sew-costumes-so-much I was more than happy to push a costume we already had in the house.

For those of you who celebrate Halloween:

Happy Halloween!

Thank you.

Happy Halloween 2012.

So Wilma decided to be a rainbow this year. Luckily we began months ago being bombarded in the mail with catalogues full of halloween costumes. I guess technically these catalogues are meant for people to buy from them but they are certainly also useful as inspiration. I am actually very bad at costumes for several reasons. I am generally thinking more fashion and wearable clothes than I am thinking show, impact and exaggeration. And my imagination is not very good in this field either. When Wilma said rainbow.....well, I thought rainbow (-dress or -top) but the catalogue showed a version with a cloud skirt and a sun hair band and 'ding' that made sense but I would never had thought about it myself. 


The top is made with stretch satin, the sun hut and rain leggings from stretch lame knit fabric and the cloud skirt is organza.
All patterns are self drafted. The top is made with raglan sleeves to make me able to make a continued half circle from shoulder to wrist with the red and orange. My starting point my actually THIS dress. 
The skirt is made from one big rectangle (okay two if you count the piece of cotton I used to make the waistband with.) I sewed the long sides together and then folded the long tube so that the skirt would have a bubbly round hem (like a balloon/bubble skirt). Six sewed tubes (in each side seam plus two front and two back) with a string fastened in the bottom made the gatherings and gave the skirt a cloud shape. The waist is gathered a bit to fit the smaller rectangular waistband  and then further gathered with three rows of narrow elastics.
The leggings is my usual legging pattern. You can see a tutorial HERE.

She seems happy with the result.

Happy Halloween to you all!

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