See this?
It’s the Precious Dress pattern/ebook by the VERY talented Carla. I believe I’ve rambled on in the past about how much I love her lounge pants (seriously easy…Macy made her own pair a couple weeks back). I took that insanely easy and fabulous dress pattern and turned it into this:
I made the waist length dress bodice with sleeves and without the collar.
Tangent: That’s what I loved about this pattern…make it empire waist or regular, add sleeves or don’t, add a collar or don’t. Want an apron? Great! Add one! I really want to make this again for reals, not for Halloweens. If you want the pattern for yourself get it here or here.
I used cheap-o Hobby Lobby costume satin ($3/yard and it’s 60″ wide!) because it is, after all, just Halloween. Once I had the bodice done, I added a peplum (or is it peplums? I’m not really up on my sewing terminology).
I got out my freezer paper and drew a half circle with a radius of 18″. I just hooked a pencil to a string…super fancy! Why 18″? That’s how wide my freezer paper was. Ha!
I cut out 2 for each dress.
Then, I hemmed the straight edge (which measured 36″) with a narrow hem.
I ran a long basting stitch on the rounded edge (which measured 56.52″…KIDDING! I didn’t actually measure it!) and then pulled my bobbin thread to gather it.
I pinned 1 to each half of the bodice and evenly distributed the gathers. Head back over to Carla’s blog for pictures. She uses a rectangle shape, but it’s the same concept.
I had the girls make tutus out of 2″ strips of white tulle knotted around elastic headbands.
There’s a simple skirt just made out of a tube with an elastic waist under the tutu for “coverage”.
We also added a wide sash at the waist. They’re about 8″ wide and 100″ long. We tied a big bow in the back.
Then, the girls rubbed charcoal briquettes all over their hands and smeared ‘em all over the dresses. This was a good thing, because up until the smearing the costumes were a little too Madonna singing “Like a Virgin” at the VMA awards for 9 year old girls to wear in public.
The spiders are hot glued to the high tops and should be removable.
The chokers are just a piece of ribbon with the skeleton stitched on and a spider ring (with the back cut off) hot glued on either side.
The earrings are cockroaches with an earring hook hot glued to the back.
The veils are about 36″ of tulle gathered on the center fold and then hot glued to a comb. We also glued a spider to the bottom/back layer. You can see Macy’s on the right if you look closely.
The bouquets are dollar store flowers with a little bit of black spray paint.
Even though I don’t “get” the whole dead bride thing, these were really fun costumes to make!
Those are great costumes!!!
So fun…and scary!
Your blog title intrigued me…good job, although I don't get the whole "dead bride" thing either. Thanks for showing off your sewing skills!
-Grace
"This was a good thing, because up until the smearing the costumes were a little too Madonna singing "Like a Virgin" at the VMA awards for 9 year old girls to wear in public." – I think I just peed myself!
I guess since I used my Google acct to set up my mom's blog, I'm now Yard Sale Fabric…WTH? Awe well… free advertising, I suppose.
Thanks so much for the great plug, Char!!! I think the dead brides look amazingly precious!
Those are GREAT!! What a creative mind you have!
you did awesome!
Whoa, those are some scary girls!
Happy halloween to you. We don't celebrate it here, but it sounds like you are going to have a lot of fun!
Love it!
They looked amazing!