Halloween Summer Dress - Original Design



Cost: $25
Time to Make: 15 hours
Timeline of Construction: December 2011 - January 2012


Pictures




Information

I’m a big fan of Halloween. It’s been my favourite holiday since I was a little kid and my love for Halloween is probably what really got me interested in Cosplaying because like on Halloween, through Cosplay you can dress up and be whatever or whoever you want for a time.

Since about the fall of 2010 I had been on the lookout for any Halloween print fabrics that really jumped out at me as I really wanted to make a Halloween dress of some sort. I really didn’t know what kind of dress I wanted to make, but I just wanted to do something to celebrate my favourite holiday. In the fall of 2011 I found a really neat McCall’s pattern (M5292) that was for a simple summer dress. I wanted more experience making dresses so I bought the pattern and figured it might be nice for my Halloween dress project. My mother actually picked out the fabric that I used for my dress. She was shopping with me while I was buying fabric for Yuffie in the fall of 2011 and she spotted a super cute blue fabric with little pumpkins, witches, ghosts and haunted houses on it and thought I might like it and she was right. XD We bought quite a bit of fabric as she wanted some extra material to make a table cover.

I think the fabric is busy, but without being too over the top and the design style is super cute. It worked out really nicely for a summer dress. With a more complicated dress design it probably would be a little too much. Granted, while I was working on it, I kept thinking the fabric reminded me of Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus. That’s something that my friends picked up on too when they saw the dress in person. XD

Although I bought the fabric a few weeks before Halloween 2011, I really didn’t have time to make it for Halloween and I really didn’t have any place to wear it to. I put the fabric aside and decided to work on it over the Christmas holidays when I had some free time. lol The perfect time to work on a Halloween outfit. XD I started working on it on Boxing Day and I finished it on January 15th after working on it bit by bit over the course of a couple of weeks. It really didn’t take me that long to make and I didn’t have to alter the pattern at all so it was quite simple in comparison to working on a character costume where you need to modify things like collars and the cut of shirts.

I probably could have done a slightly better job with matching up some of the fabric designs, but with such a busy fabric pattern, I found it tricky to not cut off portions of the designs when cutting out all the dress pieces. Everything came together really nicely and I had very little trouble putting it together aside from getting a little confused by how to place the shoulder straps. The zipper also gave me some trouble because I cut the dress bodice a little small for my actual measurements so the zipper takes a bit of a leap of faith to do up. I seem to struggle a bit with picking the right size when I cut out patterns. I know for next time that the smallest pattern size is a little too small for me. XD

I decided to buy a bunch of fun Halloween buttons from the fabric store and use a little button of a skeleton with some black ribbon to accent the left shoulder of my dress. I picked to re-wear my favourite Lolita wig with the black curly clips to give the costume a bit of a Lolita feeling and because a black wig wouldn’t make a harsh contrast with the pattern of the dress. I accessorized with a Halloween cupcake necklace, and a Nightmare Before Christmas bracelet and ring. For the shoes I alternated between black pinstripe heels and black flats and since I first wore this outfit in the winter, I also wore a short black sweater cover-up so my arms wouldn’t freeze.

I had a lot of fun putting this outfit together. It wasn’t that difficult to make and it gave me some great experience with working on dresses. It was nice to work on a project and see it come together fairly quickly without that much effort. I decided to wear it to Con-G 2012 in February because I figured it would be easy to pack and fun to wear and it was. It was too bad that I couldn’t wear it for very long on Saturday night and Sunday morning of the con and I wasn’t able to get any photos of it. I still had fun spreading a little Halloween cheer during the gloomy winter. It seems lately that my forte has been to make more Halloween related costumes and outfits and I’m totally cool with that. :3

In July 2014 I wore my Halloween summer dress to Atomic Lollipop. I paired the dress with the Arda candy corn themed wig and some candy corn flats and new jewellery. I went all out to make all my accessories Halloween themed and I really liked the final result.

Events/Conventions this costume was worn to
Con-G 2012 (Friday evening & Sunday), Anime North 2012 (Friday evening), Atomic Lollipop 2014 (Friday) & Fan Expo 2015 (Sunday)

Photo Credits
Elemental


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