We just returned from our second trip to Disney World this year! T and I have our annual passes from our wedding and wanted to get some more use out of them, so we planned this trip to check out how Disney does Halloween. None of us had ever been there for Halloween, so it was a new experience for everyone. On select nights in September and October, all of the Magic Kingdom becomes a giant Halloween party! There are dance parties, trick or treating for all ages and these are the only opportunities for adults to visit the park in full costumes!
Not to be outdone by anyone, I took on the task of making all of our costumes. That is, a costume for each of the 6 people going; Flea, Flea's bf, Noug, Sneetch, T and myself. Only about a month ago, we finally decided to go as characters from Sleeping Beauty. The decision was made because there were enough non-starring roles for each of us to be something fun. Flea, Sneetch and I were the 3 fairies; Fauna, Merriweather and Flora, respectively. Flea's bf is tall and dark haired, so he was King Stefan, complete with a mascara beard. Noug was the jester/drunk servant character named Lackey. [I personally thought his costume was the best.] T was Prince Phillip and was recognized by a few little girls in the park!
For King Stefan's outfit, I just made a long tunic from costume satin and edged the whole thing with gold bias tape. The crown was quite problematic. I bought a remnant of this awful stretch gold lame stuff for it. I ended up making two strips of it and interfaced it with heavy stabilizer. After that, I traced and cut out the crown shape and hot glued/topstitched the whole thing together. To make the crown more adjustable, I added 2 strips of elastic at the back which could be shortened with safety pins. Stefan contributed the "collar" of his costume by allowing me to cut a sleeve off of a too big red shirt he had - perfect!
Phillip's costume was fairly straightforward because we chose to make his forest outfit. T wore simple tan tunic made of jersey and edged with black bias tape over a black long sleeve shirt and brown pants. The cape was a remnant of brick red canvas, barely wide enough to cover his shoulders. I cut off a 3" section and interfaced it to make the stiff collar and then re-attached it to the rest of the cape after gathering the top edge of the long piece. We just safety pinned the cape to the tunic. The hat was made by looking at many photos of Peter Pan's hat as well as perusing some online tutorials. The boots were the funniest because they're fake and made out of black vinyl with little elastic stirrups at the bottom.
Lackey's costume was really the best because I didn't have any idea how to make balloon sleeves properly. I ended up sewing alternating strips of green fabric together to make tubes. The ends are elastic and I had to add a few pleats to the part that was sewed into the shoulder seam. I was particularly proud of the front because I was exact enough to match up the corners in the center. Plus I added a button at the back because the fabric doesn't stretch. The hat was a simple pill box thing with a $2.50 feather stuck in it. The pantaloons are a pair of T's gym shorts with spent waistband elastic. I put elastic through the bottom hems to tighten around Noug's legs and create the pouf.
The fairy costumes turned out to be significantly easier than I feared. I was able to find a fairly straight forward princess costume pattern and modify it enough to make our fairy costumes. Here's the pattern I used:
Even though the fairies' costumes are long sleeved, I decided to go with sleeveless dresses for simplicity and in case it was hot. I lengthened the bodice pieces by 3" for Flea and my dresses and about 1.5" for Sneetch's. For the satin inset, I just cut a very thin isosceles triangle and sewed it into the center of the skirt. The hats were the most challenging part, but even those only took me about 4 hours to complete all 3 to my satisfaction. In the end, I just hot glued the accent fabric around the cone and hot glued the ties to that.
The best part of our costumes was that we glowed!! You can kind of tell in the photo above (taken with another set of fairies we met in the park). I wasn't about to figure out how to make hoops for each of us, so I sewed the hems of our skirts and the rims of our hats as casings. Once down there, we strung together 5 packs of the $1 glow bracelets from Michael's and threaded them through the casings! It managed to work much better than I thought! We separated the colours so that we each used colours that matched our dresses which only increased the overall wow effect. Finally, I bought us "Knit Lite" light up knitting needles to use as wands.
