Peas Blossom Costume

This is one of several fairy costumes I am making for this years Shakespearian play a mid summer nights dream.  This is for Peas blossom it took about 20 hours to make.  The skirt was actually a dress I found thrift shopping  for 10 dollars that I cut off the top part of the dress to make the skirt added a new zipper and hook and eye and instant skirt.  I love the fact that all the fabrics have flowers on them.  Each fairy is going to have  a theme of sorts as described by that characters name  you will see what I mean as I make them.   Peas blossom is  pink flower with green leaves of course thus the color of this outfit.

We are planing a disco ball to be happening when ever the fairies are on stage and I wanted the sequins to reflect that light to make the stage more sparkling and to look like due on a flower.  I did not make the wings I bought them at Halloween time.

The corset and shirt part I made. The corset is unique in that it laces up the front and back to accommodate more sizes of person. The girl playing this character is taller than my tallest daughter so it is dragging in these photos bu tit will not be on the actual character.  My daughter's toes are freezing in these photos it was raining and the grass was cold and wet she was a good sport.  You can see in this last photo to the right she had jeans and was trying to stay warmer.  Nothing like spring in Utah to have hail snow rain and sunshine all in the same day.  We went out again to take photos later in the day and she put shoes on as her toes were still hurting.

The sequins on this dress are getting everywhere from cutting the fabric.  I will have to remember that for future reference cut and sew quickly or your house will get covered with sequins falling off of the fabric.  If any one has any tips on that not happening I would be glad to hear them.

Baby Blue Pride and Prdjudice dress

 

This is one of the dresses that did not get worn.  It too was made for  a friend of my daughter.  I had asked her if she could ask her father to make me a special item out of wood for my husband.  A wooden tie sounds like it would be stiff but it is actually sort of hinged and pretty cool.  She did not end up wearing the dress.  I did have it done in time but I guess something happened and she was not able to change into it or something or other.   Either way I am posting it here.  My three daughters love this dress.  They wish it had been one made for them.  They all love the color blue and they love the fringe details I placed on the dress.   It also has a double set of sleeves which does make it a little warmer for winters in Utah.  Which tends to be when these types of celebrations happen.  It was raining outside the day we did The Pride and Prejudice celebration  good thing we did it inside.

This is a fully lined dress.  It also has draw strings at the neck and waist as do the others.  So that you can make the dress tighter or raise up the neckline.   The fabric is a tone on tone blue also an upholstery fabric.  I used an upholstery zipper with this one too but this one has a real long zipper to make it weasier to change in and out of.  The fringe makes it so that this dress has to be dry cleaned as it will get destroyed in  a normal washing machine.  I did fray check every tassel on this dress at the top of the tassel and at the band that wraps around the tassel in the hopes of stopping that.  The fringe was a gift to me from another friend.  She gave me a lot at one time it has been a blessing to say the least.  An easy way to make something look fancier is to add trims.

Golden Pride and Predjudice dress

 

My oldest daughters class just finished reading Pride and Prejudice as a class.  To celebrate this they had a formal dinner with the students doing the after dinner entertainment by singing, playing instruments and so on.  There was also games if they wanted to do that.  I actually made four dresses for this even but only one actually got worn to the event.

I made this one for my oldest daughter so I will start here since this one actually got worn.


The fabric since I was asked about it a lot was a upholstery type fabric I use that a lot when sewing costumes.  But this is a light weight one.The gloves we already had from school plays in the past.  The cameo is a real nice very old one I was given as a gift from my children's piano teacher.  I sewed it to the velvet ribbon as I did not want the clasp coming open as that part is weak and I did not want to loose it.  The trims on the dress are just little scraps I had lying around form other projects.  I also used an upholstery zipper I do that often because costume tend to get worse use than normal clothes.  It is and to tell in these photos but the under skirt has a pattern in the fabric too a little dot pattern adds a nice contrast when worn.  Originally I bought this fabric to help costume the play Pride and Prejudice a few years back. They ended up renting costumes instead so I never made them.  Which made it supper easy to make these costumes when my daughter wanted one as I had thought the costumes out over 1 1/2 years ago and had all the supplies already.  The school does rotate through the plays so they will probably be doing this play again.  Which means these will probably be used in the future for a play since I already have them made.  This would be a Bingly sister dress as it is too fancy in fabric for the other family.  This dress was actually made for the middle daughter to wear at the David Copperfield celebration but that daughter decided to wear the aunt March costume instead.  So when the oldest needed i figured oh hey i made one for the other sister yesterday so do not not have to make another.  Not thinking that my middle daughter is taller by a few inches than the older.  So the day of the celebration we realized I had not fixed the hem.  Good thing my daughter owned a nice pair of chocolate brown satin high heels with velvet trim to wear with this.  Which I had just happened to buy 3 days prior because they were on sale for 6 dollars and they were a perfect match.  She also ware a red cape I had made for the play little women that the character Jo wore.

The girl in the bottom right of the above photo had one of the other dresses I had actually made for her sister for a David Copperfield celebration but she forgot she could wear a costume thus she did not wear it.   This family has done all kinds of nice things for my family so this dress was a sort of thank you for that. I was sort of sad as there should have been four costumes there I made but there was only one I wanted photos of all four on the girls together.
Here are the only photos I have of it of her sister wearing the dress. Sorry I took these with my phone and they are not good images.  It is hard to see in the photo but it was a blue on blue brocade with a light blue overlay.  Mother of pearl buttons on the back and a white gross grain ribbon around the empire waist.

Night at the Movies

This last weekend my daughters had a school dance to go to.  with the theme of "Night at the Movies".  They were supposed to go as their favorite either actor/actress or their favorite character.

My Middle daughter went as the Mad hatter's Daughter Madeline Hatter.  The oldest went as Arwin and her date as Aragorn.

Yes I made both of the girls costumes.  The Mad Hatter one I made the day of the dance.  I started at 2 am and kept sewing till 4pm  with a 1 hour break to eat and run an errand in the middle of the day.

My oldest daughters costume I made last year for a school celebration they had when they finished reading the Lord of the Rings they had a Hobbit Feast.  I have actually made 7 costumes from scratch on Thursday and Friday of last week.  Three Pride and Prejudice style ones for a school celebration one blue one, one red, and one golden yellow.  Three black Greek ones for another daughters Olympic celebration at school  (those only took one hour all together as I have made that pattern so much I have it memorized I used that same pattern when I did the play " Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream coat) and this Mad Hatter one for a school dance.  I made another one a week earlier for a David Copperfield celebration but I did not get too many photos of that one.   My kids school loves to have celebrations when they have finished reading a book.  Costumes usually = extra credit in the class so lots of kids have lots of costumes at this school.

At the dance my middle daughter got second place for her costume.  At the end of the dance she found out she actually got first but they gave the prize to the wrong girl.  My daughter is a good sport so she said let the girl keep the movie tickets.  She was just excited to tell me that the costume I made had won a first prize even if she did not get it.  Then she asked if I could take her to the movies to see Frozen (yes we have not seen it yet) just her and me so she could still get her prize.  I said sure as we have a pass that gets us into a movie a day for free for an entire year thus the reason she did not care about the tickets.  For us it is more of trying to find the time to go to the movie that is the issue.

I do plan on posting the other costumes I made this last week just have to get them uploaded to flicker so I can.

This is my middle daughter and a group of her friends.

 

This is my oldest daughter and the other Lord of the Rings characters that were at the dance and a photo bomb from another friend.