Epic Halloween Costume Post

Ah Halloween. The time of year when everyone gets to make fun of young women who fall prey to the male gaze by dressing up as sexy-caterpillars, as if we're not all victims of the patriarchy and one cocoon away from The Yellow Wallpaper.

When I first had my beloved offspring, it occurred to me that it's a lot more fun to dress up an adorable, innocent child than my own mangy hide, and thus my appreciation for the holiday of Halloween was born like a phoenix from the ashes.

[HENCEFORTH LET IT BE KNOWN: For the purposes of this blog, I've decided to switch the moniker of my child from AAT/Above Average Toddler to "Babu," which was her nickname pre-birth.]

When Babu was a tiny, squiggly wiggly, pre-mobile infant and her first Halloween rolled around, her costume was obvious.

• First of all, it was an homage to her super secret name. 
• Second, it was basically a costume that would never work once she could walk so we had only one chance (unless she never learned to walk, in which case we'd have other problems). 
• Third, apparently when I was a child and we would play hangman at restaurants on road trips, it was always easy to guess my seven-letter word: MERMAID.

I didn't buy anything to make this costume because I'm a home-decor fabric hoarder. I had recently picked up about 50 yards of upholstery-weight fabric at the Exeter Handkerchief Company during one of their big clearance sales. I had no purpose for most of it but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Most of it is still sitting in the closet of my sewing room, but that's a post for another day.

Long story short, I had some velvet and satin just sitting around, as well as miscellaneous ribbons and (for some reason) a purple netting-type fabric.

I grabbed a vaguely flesh-colored onesie and used some bonding tape to attach the velvet to the front in the style of a seashell bustier. Then I cut out a bunch of scalloped rows of the green-blue satin and sewed them on top of the fish tail front I had cut out. When that was complete I sewed the front and back of the tail together and added a little ribbon tie in the back to secure it on her, and then MacGyver'd on the purple netting to add a little pizzazz.

Here's our little mermaid on Halloween, ready to hit the town at a baby Halloween party:

And here's another because she was so adorbs:

For Halloween Part II, I was fully into sewing and was ready to tackle a more ambitious project.

Off I went to my only local fabric store to peruse the selection in the pattern books.

Along the way I noticed a terrifying trend in adult Halloween costumes. I'm not sure if they think there's a lot of amateur productions of Cats that need costumes or if I've just massively underestimated some adults' passion for Halloween.

Heck, I gotta admire the confidence of anyone who makes and wears one of these.

But on to the children's selection.

I considered the little unicorn in the upper right hand corner of this pic.

This page was just lacking in imagination. 

Meh.

And then I saw it. A little fox!

So I procured the pattern along with some orange fleece. I originally ordered fleece in a mustard color that was all wrong for my little fox, but thankfully I have another project in mind for it this year so it wasn't a terrible waste.

Last fall we were living in an apartment that didn't even have a dining room table in it, so I made do with the kitchen peninsula. This was counter height so to reach my foot peddle I basically perched my bum on the edge of the stool and just accepted the back ache the next day.

I finished the hood and had to take a moment to get into the holiday spirit:

I had cut all the pieces one night after work, then one Saturday night I sewed the whole thing after Babu was asleep. Here it is complete:

Then, without letting my child try it on, I started freaking out that the legs were too long for my diminutive child, so I cut them shorter, to the length you see above. That was dumb because then it was waaaay too short.

I so silly.

So I added in a few new pieces in the leg area to add the length back in and all was well. ALL WAS WELL, OK?

Here's the back with her super cute little tail that I repositioned so she wouldn't step on it:

And here's the even more adorable front. Can't be a fox without some classic navy blue Converse sneakers either:

With Halloween II down, and III on the horizon, I'm feeling good about another fleecey costume. In fact, I've already picked it out and happen to have some fabric on hand that will work perfectly.

In other news, how did it get to be almost September already? It feels like just yesterday I put away my winter coat and snow boots, and now my Facebook feed is filled with kids doing their first days of school and whatnot. 

Le sigh. Circle of life, yada yada. 

No No Kimono - McCalls 7200

Were things getting a bit too serious around here? Was I getting a bit too high on my recent successes?

The target success:failure ratio on this blog is 1:2 so here we go!

Many moons ago, when I was but a sewing novice, I picked out this pattern thinking I'd made a slinky little kimono to swan about my domicile.

McCall's 7200

I thought it'd be easy peasy. Why, you ask?

I'll show you why.

Enhance.

That's right -- False Advertising.

I was led to believe that this pattern would be EASY. Ergo, not hard. Vis a vis, simple. Concordantly, I THOUGHT HOW COULD I POSSIBLY MESS THIS THING UP?

Reader, I messed it up.

How I messed it up:

• First I probably should have made sure the belt was at my natural waist and not at my hip line. Also, it's way too short for a kimono... I want a kimono to be at least below me bum.

• Second, I probably should have known as soon as I opened the directions and saw all the pieces that this was not the pattern for me given my sewing experience level. I think there were like 45. Maybe 7. 8 even. Regardless: too many.

• Third, I should have known that this sleeve style was a no for me. It leaves all the extra fabric in the armpit area. 

• Fourth, the instructions had you HAND SEW. What was the point of the industrial revolution if I have to hand sew things?

• Fifth, big floppy neck band thing. I was supposed to hand sew this down the entire way around.

• Sixth, I probably should have actually matched notches and stuff but either my fabric was too slippery or I just couldn't get all 857 pattern pieces to fit together. It was like handing a 1,000 piece puzzle of snow to a toddler.

Obviously at some point it became apparent that this wasn't going to happen and so I abandoned it before I finished all the hand sewing.

I had some hope of figuring out something to do with the fabric, and then I even went and bought some more of it because I liked the pattern. But guess what? The sheen on the fabric basically makes it unwearable for anything other than a sexy negligee, but the weight of the fabric really wouldn't work for that so I have now tried to make this fabric work twice to no avail.

What have I learned from this experience?

1. Never trust the "Easy" button on a pattern. THEY LIE!
2. I am not the kind of person who is going to start incorporating kimono-style wraps into my wardrobe so let's chalk this one up to "new-to-sewing and basically just grabbing things that look pretty."

Wonder Toddler Pinafore

Nothing says "I am Womyn, hear me roar" quite like a pinafore.

It all started when I was walking around the grocery store on a Friday afternoon with toddler in tow. I spied a Wonder Woman action figure in the toy aisle and decided that if my child was ever going to have a Barbie-like thing it would be this one. Into the cart it went.

I haven't seen the movie yet -- waiting for it to be available for rent -- but Wonder Woman was now on my mind.

Saturday rolled around and I was scrounging for a project. I thought about starting a new quilt, but I wanted something I could finish in a day. I poked around my stash and noticed this super cute star pattern that I just got from a Hawthorne Threads Scrap Pack.

Inspired, I poked around a bit more and found half a yard of the cherry red above, and a gold-ish print. These latter two fabrics were purchased for home decor projects that they were ultimately not suitable for. They even still had the sticker on them from when I got them from Fabric.com.

I gathered an inspiration picture or two...

...and then I basically just started slapping stuff together.

The goal of this garment was to be a sort of play costume that would fit my daughter now and in the future. Therefore I didn't want to make it too fitted. 

I started with a little gathered skirt/apron using the blue star fabric. 

Then I mocked up half of the bodice, using the skirt as my guide. Above Average Toddler was sleeping at the time, so I didn't really have an opportunity to measure or anything. I just kind of felt it out. 

I liked the angular neckline. It seemed powerful.

I cut it out on the fold and made a few more tweaks. I cut a double layer so I could make a full lining.

To make the back straps, I cut a width of fabric the same width as the top of the bodice and roughly as long.

Next I sewed the necklines together...

...notched the corners...

...and then flipped it right side out and pressed it.

Then I sewed together one side of the straps and matched it to the bodice, keeping the arm sides open so I could insert the sleeves.

I have never made a ruffle sleeve before so I just winged it. I knew I had some extra fabric to redo it if I messed it up too badly.

I cut out little notches so I could turn over the seam and have it lay relatively flat.

I was using navy thread for this whole project because I don't have any red. The most visible place is here on the sleeve hem.

I pinned the sleeve so it was turned to the right side of my bodice/strap sandwich and then sewed it so all the seams were nicely hidden.

And then I was left with this when I turned it all right side out!

I laid everything else out. I had cut a band of the gold-ish fabric for a sash/belt.

I realized that the straps would just continue to fall down if I did them straight up and down, so I crossed them in the back. If I had planned this I would have made them a bit longer to compensate. 

Also at some point not pictured, I sewed everything together. I hadn't found an elegant way to attach the top and bottom to the belt, so I used a star stitch on my machine. I figured it was going to be visible anyway so might as well go with it.

Also, in an effort to make this fit a variety of sizes, I added buttons to the bottom of the straps so they could be reconfigured on the belt. I had some really adorable gold hunter buttons in my button jar. 

AAT wouldn't put this on until today, so I finally got a picture of her wearing it. She is saying "cheese" and holding her Wonder Woman figurine. I'm glad she finally got excited about it, although I always knew she'd come around to it eventually.

Modeling the back:

All in all, it was a fun project and a nice stretch of my creative muscles. I held back on getting too constumey with it after considering adding a star applique on the front. I like that it's a relatively subtle homage to the character without being too literal.