Me Made Halloween: Sally

I made a Halloween costume! This year I actually came up with a good idea and managed to execute an actual costume on time for halloween (as opposed to slapping on an old black dress and some face make-up at the last minute and calling it "dead woman", which is what I have commonly done in the past).

The idea started with a red wig that I purchased recently for another event. I really wanted to make the most of it, so I started looking up ideas using a red wig and came up with Sally, the rag doll from Nightmare Before Christmas. It was so perfect! I've seen this movie many times when I was younger and the character's dress was the perfect project for a handmade outfit since...it's a handemade patchwork-type dress.

So after my activewear sewing marathon (posts and photos coming soon!), I launched myself into a Halloween sewing marathon, with one week to complete the costume.

I didn't have time to go to the fabric store, so instead I bought a few items at the thrift store near my work. I looked for garments of the right colors, big enough that they would produce enough material. I was pretty lucky and found all the right colors. I also had a black man's shirt in my stash that had been there forever waiting for a refashioning and so I decided this was going to be it!

The pieces of the dress all have different prints, so I bought fabric markers from Michael's to draw the prints by hand. I also got a big darning needle and some fingerweight yarn to do the "topstitching".

For the pattern, I used the same as my summer dress from last year (burda magazine 108-04-2010). It had the right silhouette to match Sally's dress. I only had to trace the long version of the sleeve which I didn't use before. The pattern comes with one full piece for the front and one for the back (no waist seam) so it was also easy to split them up into the different patchwork pieces. 

First I traced the second half of each side in order to have a full front and back. Then I drew the lines for each piece, using pictures from the internet as guide. On each piece I wrote what colour and what "print" would be used, and I also added numbers in each corners, matching those numbers in the corners of the other pieces it would attach to. This was to make sure I wouldn't get all the pieces mixed up and not know how to reassamble them once cut.

Once I cut all my pattern pieces I cut the fabric each color at a time. I actually left the pattern attached to the fabric until I was ready to sew that piece to the rest, again to avoid confusion.

 

I had made some adjustements to the pattern (slightly more A-line skirt and longer hemline), which I ended up coming back on when I sewed the dress together. It was too long and too wide. So i detached the pieces that were connected around the waist and removed about 5cm of heights from those pieces. I used the bust darts from th pattern but omitted the back darts so I had to get rid of the excess fabric at the side and "center" seam.

Once I was happy with the fit,  I started doing all the print drawing. I placed a piece of cardboard inside the dress to avoid the paint transferring to the other side. The reason I painted the dress after sewing it and not before is that some of these pieces wrap around the side - there is a side seam but I wanted them to appear like one continuous piece around the side, and I didn't want to have to do pattern matching, so it was easier to draw the print over the side seam after it was sewn.

And finally I topstitched all the seams with the yarn for the final touch.

I'm really happy with the result, it looks pretty legit. Now, those are not the colors of the actual doll in the movie (because the movie is so dark, everything is more toned down and muted), but because I had the bright red wig I decided to go with the brighter version of this costume.

I got some white tights from American Apparel, and the stripped "socks" are actually sleeves I chopped off a trift store shirt - I couldn't seem to find simple black & white stripped sockes anywhere so that ended up being the best option.

For the face make-up, I researched online a bit. I didn't want to buy too many elements that I would only be using for halloween. A couple years ago I came accross this you tube video that suggested using Lise Watier's corrector wheel to make pale faces, thanks to the blue and green correctors. I already had the wheel so I used it. As a base I also used the NYX jumbo eye pencil in White, as suggested in this video. I found a couple of black and white eyeliners for 1.99 at London drugs, and I also purchased the cheapest blue eye shadow palette I could find.

With that I was set, and after watching a few different tutorials, I kind of made up my own version of it. Being a wearer of high-prescription glasses, I always find it frustrating to do eye make-up, because it will barely be visible in the end, but oh well...

I went to a couple of house parties on Halloween night and got lots of compliments on my costume, so yeah, pretty pleased with myself! Definitely one, if not the best costumes I've worn...

 

With my friend Luigi, ready to go meet Mario...