Happy Halloween!

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I've never carved a pumpkin before though, until some friends got me to do it this year. Came out pretty neat!

There's always ghosts touching you

I found this super cute ghost fabric the last time I went to the $1.99 Fabric store, which is soon to be $2.99.

Nooooooooo ~

I mean, that's still good.

The fabric is very soft and sheer, so I decided on one of my usual designs - a bubble skirt. Once I had the skirt, I thought I should have a matching top... and (what a surprise) I made one.

"What's a good way to get some tentacles without making too much of a production of it?"

One of my friends recently had a "crazy" idea to dress up in tentacles. She drew me a picture, suggesting that this is probably a weird thing that won't work out the way it looks in the picture.

It really didn't seem all that unreasonable to me, so I offered to make them. I looked around at "squid plushies" to get ideas for construction and we picked out some fleece and minky fabric based on what I'd seen. The house got pretty thoroughly coated in minky fluff (if you've never worked with it, it sheds like crazy when cut) but the tentacles came together nicely.

As you can see in the drawing and in the final costume images, the outfit consists of a tentacle belt or skirt (whatever you want to call it), sleeves/arm warmers, and a collar.

"You have to wear a bell so I can find you if you run away and hide under a car"

You know, like a cat would.

Since I put together this witch outfit for myself for a Halloween party, and my boyfriend likes it when I dress him up, I wanted to make some sort of matching "costume" for him. We decided on kitty ears and a tail (he also has a collar with a bell on it, so he doesn't get lost of course.)

This isn't my boyfriend, clearly, but he wasn't available when I took the photos and Bria here agreed to help (thanks Bria!).

I used the same pattern for the ears as I use for my animal hats, for example these or this one. They are a layer of fleece, interfacing, and faux fur, sewn together then attached to a headband. For this set I also added little bows. We have a bit of a joke going about having bows on everything.

I free-handed the tail. It's a rectangle with rounded ends, about 24" by 7". There's a belt loop on the end that can also be safety pinned on if you're not wearing a belt.

I could go for a taco right about now.

A couple months ago, some of my friends came to me and asked if I would make them into a taco for Halloween. Well, that's an opportunity that's hard to pass up! (They get super bonus points for asking far enough in advance). I think this is a super cute couple's costume. Sam here is playing our taco shell/tortilla, and Eloise is the lovely bunch of fillings.

For the shell, I cut a large circle of 1/2" upholstery foam (technically two half circles I had to sew together because I couldn't get a piece large enough) and made a cover for it out of fabric that has sort of a speckled yellow/orange pattern. I added loops for the shoulders, hands, and legs so it doesn't flap around behind him. In retrospect, it could have been a bit bigger. I was too concerned with making it hard to move around and sit. Sam found a perfect yellow shirt to go with it, and I can only assume he already had these gold pants.

For the dress, Eloise gave me a simple black dress that fit her well to use as a base. I sewed fleece shapes over that to simulate the layers of fillings that would go in the taco. A bit more on that later.

I got really excited to make this little hat for some reason. It's a small foam base covered with brown fleece (for meat) with other fillings sewn over that. The whole thing is sewn to a headband. 

I don't think I'm qualified to fly this broom.

The other day I was looking for a fabric in my stash and ran into this cool flocked organza that had completely slipped my mind. I promptly forgot what I was doing and made a skirt and hat for a witch costume. I'm going to a couple Halloween dance parties next month so this will get put to use soon at least.

The fabric is a transparent purple with black spiderwebs. I wanted the webs to pop so I used a fuchsia lining. The skirt is a circle skirt with the hem gathered to the lining to make it bubble. It has a spandex waistband.

This is Halloween

This is the song stuck in my head right now:

This is a skirt that I made a couple years ago, but I pretty much only get to wear it during Halloween time, so here it is! The fabric is an amazing print that was available at Jo-Ann's and I should have gotten a ton of. It was out of my budget though, so I only got enough for one little skirt. It is quite the usual skirt - gathered rectangles with a double elastic waist.

It's a simple project, but one of the reasons I decided to share was because I did some matching makeup and wanted to sneak that onto the blog. shhhh.

I got the idea for this from some ladies over on reddit.com/r/MakeupAddiction

Happy Halloween!

Something about a bustle and a beard.

Some long time ago I put together a vaguely burlesque outfit for a themed party. I don't actually remember what the theme was, but apparently it gave me an excuse to make a tie-on bustle, shorts, and fascinator.

 

The bustle is a pretty simple design. It's a large gathered rectangle on a waistband, with two short straps and D-rings on the outside  corresponding to much longer straps on the inside. To wear, you pull the interior straps under the bottom of the rectangle and up through some loops on the surface (to keep the straps in place), then thread the straps through the D-rings near the top. It can be adjusted to be more or less gathered up.

Unfortunately I don't really have a good picture of the shorts. They're basic bloomers with some lace on the leg openings and pockets (because all party outfits need pockets).

The headpiece is a buckram oval with a small wedge missing to make it sort of the shape of a spoon head. I covered that with fabric, then added some net and ribbon decoration and a hair comb to keep it on. It's pretty simple but worked to keep my head from looking too plain.

Why am I posting about this now? I used the bustle a couple days ago for a bearded lady costume. I wore this to work (retail does have some perks once in a while). This was my first time applying a fake beard. One customer explained he kept looking at me because he thought I was a dude in a dress (not a girl with a fake beard) and was trying to figure out whether that was true. Children were confused. I got to joke around about forgetting to shave. My manager kept announcing that people should find the bearded lady if they need help. I got laughs and double takes. With all this, I say the costume was a success.

Oh no, it's been months!

I said I'd keep this up... I really want to, things have been pretty busy though. To make up for my lack of posts, here are some other costumes from Halloween. This isn't even half of all the ones I wore since I dressed up almost every day for work. I think it came to something like 36 costumes.

I was a couple characters from Alice in Wonderland, Alice being one of them. The dress isn't something I made specifically for Halloween - I've had it for a couple years now. I remember using a pattern, heavily altered though.

I didn't make any of these specifically to use in a clown costume either, but it all worked together pretty well. The no-sew tutu, leggings, and tank top with side gathers are all sewn by me, long sleeve shirt is some tie dye I did.

Funny story on this one - I purposefully didn't do full white clown makeup because I didn't want to scare anyone, and yet there was still a girl at the store I work in (probably around 13 years old) who could not look at me and had to close her eyes whenever I walked by.

So, I really like capes.

Capes are awesome. They're fun to wear, work with lots of styles, and are super easy to put together. I guess the downsides are the amount of fabric they use and how they choke if they slide back. I tried finding information on stopping this, but short of attaching the cape to clothing underneath I can't find much - guess I'm not cut out to be a superhero.

Over the past couple weeks I've made 3 very different capes, using zero patterns and vague measurements:

1. I have to get to dress up for work on the weekends from now till Halloween, and when I saw this cheap red velour I thought it would be great for Little Red Riding Hood. It's a bit scratchy on the neck seam so I'll probably have to wear something with a higher collar underneath, but I like the look. This "pattern" is a half circle.

Satyr costume

Since I'm already in a Halloween mood after the last post, here's another costume. This was for Halloween last year. I've seen lots of these costumes in the past and really wanted to make one of my own after that. I wasn't actually planning on doing it last year, but my boyfriend at the time helped convince me. Once I was done, I was glad I went through with it even though it was a lot of work. It's also a bit of a storage nightmare.
I used several tutorials scattered around the web as guidelines - sorry, I don't have all the links now. The necklace is the only piece I did not make or alter in any way.
Fun fact: I got a lot more compliments than I expected on my butt and tail while wearing this.

The Lady Gaga Wedding Dress

Here's one of my favorite projects from 2010. It's proven to be quite versatile. I originally made it for a Craftster challenge that had us use a bed sheet to make something. I wanted a gown inspired by Lady Gaga, but since I was using white, it turned into pretty much a wedding dress... made out of a bed sheet. Someone sang the wedding march as I walked by to take photos outside. People have also mentioned it reminds them of the Labyrinth, but that's a great movie so I don't mind the comparison at all. I've also worn it in a fairy godmother costume and as a dead bride/theatre ghost at school.
The main pattern was Simplicity 3673 with some changes - clearly the sleeves, which were a pattern I enlarged from a textbook. I just winged it on the collar, which ties in the back with some ribbon.
I like doing weird makeup too, so to add a little more Lady Gaga inspiration, I used CD pieces as face decoration. (Pictures after the jump - click on any photo to enlarge)