Snow White costume

Yep, I'm still here.

I know I haven't posted in over a month. I've spent the last month 1) moving houses and 2) sewing Littles' Halloween costume. I think the first was more time consuming, but it's really a close call :)

Anyway, we're in the new house now, and good news! I now have a dedicated space for sewing :) (In the old house, my sewing area was in our guest room -- and we have guests frequently, so I had to take a sewing break or move my sewing stuff elsewhere on a regular basis. Not to mention the fact that guests had to find someplace to squeeze there stuff amidst all my fabric.) Bad news, I haven't had any time to set it up yet, so I'm still not sewing again. One of these days.

As for the Halloween costume, that did get finished, in time for the big day.

For those of you who aren't intimately familiar with the Disney Princesses (lucky!), this is Snow White. The pattern is Simplicity 2817, which is the official licensed one. I made a size 5 for Littles, who normally wears a 4T, and it fits fine with some room to grow.

The fabric is all Symphony broadcloth from Joann's. This is the cheapest kind of broadcloth that Joann's carries, and if I were to do this again, I think I'd use the next "step up." The Symphony stuff really does feel kinda thin and cheap. Because it is, I guess :)

Despite using the cheapie broadcloth, all the fabric cost about $20, which is about as much as a ready-to-wear Snow White dress! But this does include some nice extras, like the cape. (Which Littles has started wearing independently of the Snow White dress -- for example, she'll put it over her Silvermist costume and call herself "Super Silvermist!") Besides, those stupid store-bought dresses always start falling apart within days. Even with the cheapie broadcloth, this one is holding up much better.

Good thing, because as I implied earlier, I'm not 100% sure which was more time consuming, moving houses or sewing this costume :) That's a bit of an exaggeration, but really, this did take a while to sew. It wasn't particularly hard, there are just a lot of pieces to cut out and put together. Still, I think the end result was worth it.

I followed the pattern pretty closely, except:

• I used my serger on most seams, rather than my sewing machine. The pattern has a 5/8" seam allowance, so before sewing a seam, I'd draw a line 3/8" from the edge, and serge on that line. The serger adds another 1/4" seam allowance, so that's just right.
  There were only a few non-straight-line raw seams, mostly around the armholes. For those, I had to sew a basting line anyway to do the gathers, so I sewed the basting line at 3/8" in and then tried to serge along the basting line.
• I skipped the collar. I worked on it one night and couldn't figure it out, and I had way too much other stuff going on in my life to spend a ton of time messing with it.
• I used snaps, rather than velcro, to secure the cape to the dress (less likely to shift/come apart), and velcro, rather than a zipper, on the back opening (easier to get on/off independently).
• I goofed initially, and sewed the skirt onto the bodice the wrong way! So the seam was on the outside of the dress. Oops. I had to cut it off and re-serge it. In the process, I think the bodice lost a little of its "definition" -- if you look at a picture of Snow White, the bodice dips down further/more sharply at the front waistline. Also, at certain angles, the piping doesn't seem to match up quite right with the dip in the bodice. I might try to fix it up a bit, but it does look OK as-is, for the most part.

Here are a few more shots...

The headband has been a big hit as well. I don't love it -- I put glue all along the top of the headband to secure the fabric, and you can see the glue line even now that it's dried. I should have just put glue on the bottom of the headband. But anyway, I guess the important thing is that Littles loves it so much that she wants to wear it to school practically every day. And I have a few more of these headbands (I could only find a 3-pack of suitably sized headbands) and plenty more fabric to use to cover them, and these are super easy to make!

Another shot of the cape...

With Noob... I wanted to make him a Dopey costume to match, but simply ran out of time. And this might be the last year I could coerce him into wearing a costume to match his big sister's. Oh well.

So that's that! I'll see you again once my sewing room is set up :)

Silvermist fairy costume

If you don't have a preschool-age girl in your life, you are probably unfamiliar with Silvermist. But everyone probably knows her good friend Tinker Bell, of Peter Pan fame. The marketing wizards at Disney apparently figured out that they could make Tinker Bell a star in her own right, and sell more stuff. So there are now movies that feature Tinker Bell. She has an entourage of fairy friends, each possessing a different talent. Silvermist is a "water fairy."

Like many other preschool-age girls, Littles adores Tinker Bell. In fact, when we went to the pumpkin patch with her preschool class back in October, out of maybe 10 girls in our group, three of them planned to be Tinker Bell for Halloween. Littles was one of them, and she insisted that I sew her costume.

I used Butterick 4632 as the pattern. It's not as pretty as the official licensed Disney fairy pattern (Simplicity 2559 for sizes 1/2 to 4, or Simplicity 2872 for sizes 3-8), but it is very easy to sew. I didn't make the included wings; instead, I picked up green wings at Dollar Tree. Here is the finished costume:

Littles loves her Tinker Bell costume, but she also requested a Silvermist costume and a Vidia costume. (Vidia is actually a bit of a villain in the Tinker Bell movies, but Littles likes her because she wears purple, which is Littles' favorite color.) So I decided to sew them for her as a Christmas present. Noob's gift ended up taking so long that I could only do one, and I chose to do Silvermist. Thankfully, this one came together much faster. It took less than 2 hours of sewing time.

I made the original Tinker Bell costume out of some relatively expensive "special occasion" fabric (for the top) and stretch satin (for the skirt) from Joann's. I figured out afterwards that I could use crushed panne instead, which I picked up on sale for $2.99/yard at Hancock Fabrics. Score! And it worked really well!

Here is Littles wading through her other presents in her new Silvermist costume on Christmas morning:

I like how it turned out, for the most part. I messed up the elastic casing on the skirt, but the top covers it anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Also, the neck hole is too big for Littles, so the costume tends to slide off one of her shoulders. I had this problem with the original Tinker Bell costume and I thought it was because I had sewed the neckline incorrectly... but I did it right this time and it's still a problem. I think the size small (which is what I made) might just be a little big for her. Oh well, a safety pin in the back of the top holds it on her shoulders for now, and it gives her room to grow.

Littles could care less about the big neck hole, and has now worn this costume for three days straight :) But she has asked for blue wings. Darn, Dollar Tree only sells fairy wings around Halloween. I might have to learn how to make them myself...