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Halloween Costume Contest 2013

Day Of The Dead Woman

Day of the Dead Skeleton Woman

What a joy to finaly have the chance to make my Day Of The Dead costume.  I have been thinking about this for a while and have just never found the time.  This year I was determined to make this.  Nothing was going to stop me not even a bunch of broken sewing machienes.  

This costume was sewn entirly by hand, no sewing machiene at all.  I know, I know what was I thinking.  I couldn’t afford to have them looked at before Halloween and there is something wrong that I just couldn’t fix.  I made it all by hand.  

I started with the skelleton masks.  I layered many, many layers of paper towls to get the lumps and bumps I was after.  Each layer of paper towl was held down with modge podge.  When I was satisfied with the shape I did one final layer of modge podge and cotton fabric to smooth out some of the bumps.  Then I painted the whole thing.  

The wig was my crown jewl.  I got a cheep wig from CVS, it was a long black and red hair wig.  I made a tutu and hand stitched the waist band of the tutu around the crown of the wig.  It looked silly.  I combed the hair over the tule of the tutu and made the big sticking up section by hand sewing the hair in place around the tutu.  When I shaped all the hair I sewed in some flowers all over and finaly glued in the skeleton sparkle scull.  

The body of the costume was a hand sewn black knit legging, and long sleve black knit shirt.  The pattern for the knit clothing was mostly just a guess.  I didn’t do a flat patttern, I did a little draping but mostly just cut out the shapes.  It is not the most attractively sewn garment and the stitches are large and visable but it did the trick.  It even gave it a more spooky hand sewn detail that I kinda liked.  

I than drew out some bones on a bunch of white felt with a sharpie and cut them out.  I turned the boans upside down so the sharpie side was facing down and pined them onto the black knit base outfit.  I than hand stitched all the boans onto the base costume with a wip stitch.  I did it while I was waiting in Dr.s offices and while I sat in the car before my kids got out of school.  It took a lot less time than I was expecting.  

Last I hand stitched the corset.  Not the easiest thing to do and I wouldn’t reccomend it.  It took a long time and it is very hard to sew through the tightly woven fabrics.  I made the pattern by doing a duck tape body double of my torso area with a nice well fit bra on.  I than took out 4 inches from the width of the tuck tape pattern and used it as the final pattern for the costume corset.  

It is not a traditional corset at all.  I skiped the busk because that was one more thing to sew in and I didn’t need that.  I also used cheep plastic boaning because this was suposed to be a quick little halloween costume.  I would not use the pastic boaning again.  You can see in the photos all the bunching and wrinckeling that is in the corset.  Major no, no, do not skimp on the boaning.  I learned my lesson.  

I did my own makeup which is not my best skill but I realized I couldn’t wear the mask with my glasses and I don’t have contacts.  This costume was a big hit around the neighborhood.  Win or loose this costume gets a gold star in my book.  I scared a couple kids, had a great time making it, and Halloween rocked!  

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