Dragon tales

McCall 2335 -Dragon costume. I used Poly Taffeta from Joann's, fleece, hi-loft batting instead of fiberfill.


DS wanted to be Godzilla for Halloween this year so I found this pattern and immediately looked up reviews. I needed to see what I was in for!

In all, it was a well drafted pattern with the exception of the arm and leg length. I have one of the tall kids in class but I still had to remove 4'' from the sleeves and 3'' from the legs. I wasn't planning to put elastic at wrists and ankles so I shorted the pattern pieces with that in mind after quickly pin fitting him.

The instructions were crazy. If I had constructed the costume in the order given it would have taken me all month. It did take the better part of a few days as it was.

I grouped like tasks together like constructing all the spiney parts at once instead of at the point where it would be attached to a body part.

The instructions had the tail attached to the back bodice immediately but that sounded like a lot of wrangling at the machine to get around that tail. I constructed the body as much as possible before attaching the tail.

I knew the tail would be heavy so I wanted to keep it from pulling the back down and choking my poor little guy. I ran a length of 1/4'' elastic from the inside tip of the tail and pulled it taut as I attached the tail to the back bodice. Then I measured his chest and cut 3/4'' elastic to fit around his torso, bringing up the 1/4'' elastic and attaching it. Once the contraption was pulled snug up under his armpits, voila! No more major tail problem.

I also knew the tail would get ruined from walking outside and I was right! I need to replace a large portion of the tail.

Warding off scary trick-or-treating brother to protect damsel with camera.


Thank heavens I will never need to sew another one of these, however, I do recommend it to others. It really turns out a cute costume! So many trick-or-treaters called out to DS to say how cool his costume looked. He even got double candy from a few houses because of the green and yellow Oregon Duck colors. Yep, that was the idea!

Fish anyone?

Simplicity 4926, Really Cool Fish Costume. OOP. Couldn't get my hands on it, so I had to self-draft this fish.



My third grader came home early last week and asked if I could make a fish costume like that cool one on the sewing website. He remembered the dead fish costume Twistedangel made a few Halloweens ago. He had wanted one at the time but completely forgot about it until now. His teacher had him scheduled to do a presentation on the abyss and march in a parade representing his chosen biome in a few short days.


"Um, are you SURE you need to be a fish?" I asked.

"I must be an anglerfish. PLEEEAASE, Mom!" he begged.

I'm a softie for those big brown eyes, so an adventure into costumedom began.

No problem! I jumped on PR and plugged in the word "fish" and found the review. Of course, the cheapskate in me remembered to check the pattern sale thread. I determined I could pick up the pattern Thursday morning for $1.99, just enough time to complete this costume for Friday morning activities. This was going to be a piece of cake.

Right?

I didn't figure out this pattern is Out of Print until I couldn't find it at Hancock! This was starting to look like a crisis situation.

Time to get serious. I had a rough idea what an anglerfish looked like (who could forget those teeth LOL) and having read all the reviews I knew I needed 1/2'' foam at the thickest. I picked out a bunch of things at Joann when I happened upon the remnant rack. That was it. Everything was switched out for remnants and I saved over $20. It was great!


I ended up buying a headliner remnant instead of foam. Blue sparkley dance type spandex instead of cotton for the gills. Navy blue poly satin to make the lips for $1.

I bought enough blue suiting for the fish body plus a spring dress for me, enough blue cotton for the lining of both. It took a while to think it all through. It was a bit challenging. The dress will be my reward for straining my brain -- M5658, View C.

A quick measure of DS's head and I sketched the fish body on plastic, hoping for the best! I traced the pieces off my master drawing, added seam allowances, cut the fabric and started constructing the body. It went together fairly well save the darn curves. Let's just say I won't incorporate so many curves on a project in the future! It was an interesting endeavor, however, and a lot of clipping.

The inner foam substititute, headliner, turned out to be just perfect. I cut two without seam allowances and then cut two more a bit smaller, basted two together to create each side with a pocket of sorts, and stuffed the pockets with batting.


I put my son to work stuffing the fins. It really didn't work out too well as they flopped about and didn't turn out exactly as I envisioned. But, what are you going to do, right? No time to slow down and reengineer fins. Now I see that I should have read DaleC's review closer because she provides the answer to constructing perfect fins. Well done, Dale!

The teeth were skimped on because I was running out of steam. I do intend to go back and replace them with stuffed teeth eventually.

Frankly, it looks more like toothy-faced dolphin. The mouth part didn't work out exactly as planned but the next time I could definitely execute it better.

Everything came together smoothly albeit it took an entire evening. I sewed the lining, lips, body together and turned the ensemble to try it on. The very moment I pulled it over my head to check for fit, the power went out. OMG! 3am and the power went out - just like that! Darn lightening storm. I waited a few minutes, standing there in the dark, wearing a fish head, looking like a total goof. Lucky I was too tired to wait any longer as the power didn't come back on for 6 hours!!!


Poor anglerfish never did get eyes but my son didn't seem to notice. He had a blast in the parade and everyone wanted to try on the fish head!

So many costumes

Halloween is one of my favorite events of the year. I usually have so much fun planning, organizing and sewing our costumes. This year was different since we did a lot of brainstorming but couldn't come to a consensus for a family theme.


Brainstorming costume designs

I really wanted to be Princess Fiona but had trouble talking the boys into Shrek characters. Each thought the other one should be donkey. Ah, well. Next year I'll figure out a theme we all can enjoy.



They both chose costumes that I considered trying to make, but decided not to even bother in the end. It was a memorable Halloween although I wasn't sewing frantically at the last minute for once!