I usually begin Halloween costume preparations in mid- to late-August, so getting started after the first week of October feels woefully late to me, but I think I’ll still have plenty of time to put together a pretty fun costume for this year’s festivities.
My concept this year is a space traveller inspired by 1960s retrofuturism art. I drew a relatively simple design, then drafted a strapless, princess dress from my bodice block using the method laid out in Patternmaking for Fashion Design by Helen Joseph Armstrong. I whipped up a quick toile, then drew the design onto it, which I’ll next use to draft the final pattern pieces.
The next step, of course, was to purchase fabric. My good friend Diana was kind enough to take me on a tour of Los Angeles’ famous fashion district, a place I’d always been curious about but intimidated to visit by myself. I ended up buying way more fabric than I’ll need for this project, but, in retrospect, much less than I could have bought considering how tempting a lot of the selections were! Since I’m sort of figuring out this costume as I go, I figured it would be better to have too much fabric than not enough, and I’m sure I’ll find a use for the leftovers.
I’ll update you all again in a few weeks when my costume is further along. Until then, thanks for reading!
PS: Have you planned your Halloween costume yet? What are you planning to go as? Will you be sewing it yourself? Let me know in the comments!
Non-halloween question! What dress form are you using that matches your measurements well enough to drape on?!?!
This is a DIY dress form from Bootstrap Patterns that I customized to fit my measurements! It’s not 100% perfect, but close enough that I can use it for projects like this where it would be difficult to design a pattern directly onto my body.
That’s amazing. I looked at that before but hadn’t seen many in the wild! That’s awesome that its working well enough for you.
I haven’t seen many either, which I think is a little surprising? It was not a very difficult project (the hardest part was stuffing it), and relatively inexpensive especially compared to the price of purchasing a dress form!