Homemade Halloween!

I can barely put into words how excited I am about my Halloween costume! Hence why I'm posting on a Saturday!

I decided this year to go after the ultimate fashion no-no icon:

A completely ridiculous idea but I knew the whole outfit hinged on finding cheap, white feather boas. Once those had been found (4 to be exact), it was a matter of being patient and stalking salvation army. Fortunately today was my lucky day!

Here was my cast of characters:



Feather boas, a child's black t-shirt, an orange onesie (it was thicker than a t-shirt and I liked the color), a large men's white t-shirt and the piece de resistance: a child's Christening gown.

In the spirit of New Dress A Day, I couldn't help but put it on before snipping away at it



The muslin in at the bottom needed a little love to get right, but it was the puffiness of this dress that made it perfect!

I started with cutting off the...um, fringe near the neckline. I'm definitely keeping it for when I feel like dressing like a schoolmarm



From there I don't have a lot more photos because I was in full-on crazy crafting mode. But once the neck on the dress was cut off, I worked on the swan neck.

I cut up the white t-shirt into two long strips and sewed them together leaving both the top and bottom unstitched. Then I cut up the orange onesie (which made me feel kind of bad) into two sides to make up the beak and sewed those two pieces together leaving the one side open so that I could then sew it onto the white tube. Once I sewed together the white "neck" and orange "beak", there was visible stitching when I turned it inside out, so I covered this with black ribbon. I hot glue gunned the ribbon and black t-shirt to make the eye. After all of this, this is what I had:



I also glued some jewels on for the eyes that I found in my craft box. I stuffed the swan with the extra t-shirt & onesie fabric - reuse and recycle!

Then it was just a matter of securing the feather boas to the lacy part of the dress. I found that fishing wire worked perfectly -- it was so easy to knot it into a small part of the lace and just wrap it around the boa so that it held it in place. It took me 3 boas to wrap it around the front of my dress (I left the back plain) and 3 hours later...TA DA:



I left the lace sleeves on because I think it looks kind of cute and it will be warmer in the New England weather. Believe it or not the feathers keep me pretty warm, so I think it will be great for walking around outside.

*****



Happy High Fashion Halloween, ya'll!!