You might not imagine that Halloween costume sewing and dancesport sewing have much in common. Typically, Halloween costumes are made of lower quality fabrics to keep costs down on an outfit meant to be worn for one night a year, or perhaps even just one night in a lifetime. On Halloween, it is permissible to wear garments and accessories that don't fit quite right, or that look generally inauthentic, because as long as the general idea of our costumes get communicated to fellow party-goers, we have made a successful go of dressing up for the holiday.
As a seamstress, I take pride in producing quality garments, no matter what the occasion, though I will admit that the "one night" aspect of Halloween affects the gusto of my drive for authenticity. This Halloween, I had two sewing projects, one large and one small.
The large project was my main Halloween costume. My boyfriend and I decided to have another try at couples costuming, given a pretty successful foray the year before as He-Man and She-ra. Most elements of those costumes had been purchased; I had the good luck to find an adult She-ra costume online. I had to alter the bra cups, which were enormous for a medium, and cover the area where the inside straps were attached with t-shirt scraps because the gold accents were so itchy. When nothing suitable could be found, either from costume shops or from thrift stores, for He-Man's breast plate, I fashioned one out of faux-suede upholstery fabric and red felt.
This year we struggled to find a good idea. Feasibility is always a concern with Halloween costumes. We've often talked about dressing up as Link and Zelda, but it would be very hard to put those costumes together, and would probably involve much labor-intensive design and sewing on my part. My sewing skills and available free time don't add up to Link and Zelda just get. It was important, also, to choose a couples costume that reflected our interests and personalities; any old costume that can be bought at a store in a couples package won't do. After a bit of debate, we arrived at an idea that was both palatable and do-able: Gaius Baltar and Caprica Six from the new Battlestar Galactica.
The only problem with Gaius and Six was making the costumes recognizable. We had resigned ourselves to the fact that people who had never seen the show would simple not recognize us. Thus we had to do our best to be authentic to as many details as possible so that fans of the show would pick up on our identities easily. The danger was that our costumes would look too ordinary; we didn't want to be just a guy in a suit and a lady in a red dress. We found some photos on the internet of fans who had gone this route for a couples costume who ended up doing precisely that, but we also found some more successful attempts, and used those for ideas.
After searching the websites of standard commercial sewing pattern producers for a pattern that could be used or adapted for a Six-like dress, I came up with nothing. Given the the problem of being recognizable, and the lack of reasonable facsimiles, I decided to design the dress myself so that it would look as much like the original as possible. I found a couple of photos online of Six-dress replicas that had been made as costumes, and one in particular that included a description of a few of the challenges faced by the seamstress. After studying these dresses, plus photos of the real Six dress, I developed an initial plan, including some things I wanted to keep, and some I decided to eliminate.
I wanted to retain the seam across the fullest part of the bust, which was not included in all of the replicas I saw. I liked it for it's decorative aspect, and because I could use it as something of a lateral dart to shape the bodice. I decided to get rid of the waist-line seam from the original, because, while it is hardly visible on the dress tailored to Trisha Helfer, it was a little too visible in some of the replicas, and I don't like when dresses visually cut across the middle. I also decided not to bother with a zipper or the seamless sides. The side slits would be easier to make with side seams, and I didn't deem that it would affect the authenticity of the costume's appearance with any significance. As for the zipper, I figured that since I had decided to use four-way stretch fabric, why bother?
Essentially, I had three pattern pieces (not including the straps) after the initial design: the upper bodice, and the dress front and back. After sewing together these three elements and trying the dress on, I discovered two things. First, I would need a lining, because every detail of my underwear showed through the clingy fabric. I had decided to use Dryflex high performance 4-way stretch knit, partly because it was on sale at Fabric.com, and because they had two colors of red that I liked. This decision was good and bad. I very much enjoyed working with the Dryflex, and have since bought up a bunch of this fabric for future projects. On the downside, it doesn't have the kind of drape I would have liked for a slinky dress. I'm going to try cutting it on the bias for making skirts in the future, but for the Six dress, I just consoled myself with the inherent imperfection of Halloween costumes and kept working. Secondly, in the first try-on, I discovered that I had forgotten to add an upper seam allowance to the back dress piece, and so I would have to open the cut outs a little wider at the bottom to compensate. As a result, the side cut-outs would be larger than the dress from the show. I resolved that I would just have to show a little more skin than Six, and I took my pattern pieces to some red Jet Set, a fairly thin stretch knit readily available at the local Joann, to make the lining.
The next task was to finish the cut-outs and neck line. My first attempt was to make slender facings out of the Dryflex and sew them to the dress and lining in a method similar to how I would use bias-tape as an inside facing. That worked out okay, but the points of the cut-outs weren't strong enough and thus didn't retain their shape as well as I wanted. I decided, then, to use regular bias tape on the inside of these facings to reinforce them. That method worked to reinforce the shape, but the dress still had a tendency to open up at the cut-outs when I moved, making the dress look a little bunched-up. At last I decided to try one final strategy to make the cut-outs stay in place. I ripped out the cut-out and neck-line seams one last time and replaced the internal bias tape with elastic, finishing the edges just as I would a ballroom dancesport dress. Finally, the cut-outs didn't bunch, and the dress hugged my body.
While the Six Dress was my main concern this Halloween, I did end up with a side project. Our annual Halloween party at work was on Friday the 30th. My costume creativity was largely sapped, and I knew I could not wear the Six costume. There aren't enough sci-fi nerds at the studio to recognize it, especially without my Gaius Baltar, and so I knew I had to wear something else. In the end, I recycled my She-ra outfit from last year (I had worn something different to the work party last year), but realized I would be dancing, and thus face different costuming dilemmas.
The cape would simply have to be dealt with, nothing for it; my spins would just have to be more conservative. The skirt was also a problem, as it would clearly flare out when I spun, leaving people with a full view of my posterior, but ballroom dancers have tackled that problem before. I simply bought a pair of spandex boy shorts to wear underneath. My last problem was trickier. There was no way I could dance for four hours in the boots I'd worn last year. They were high-heeled platforms, and had given my feet a lot of trouble last year, even not dancing in them. Additionally, it would be, of course, ideal to wear dance shoes for this event, since I would be expected to spent the evening dancing with our students. Investing in dance boots for one night was not high on my list of options.
I decided, instead, to create some faux-boots. Something that would fit over my leg, giving the illusion of boots, while still leaving my feet free to wear dance shoes. I scoured my fabric in storage and found some cream-colored moleskin leftover from an old project. There was just enough to fit the bill, and so I formulated a plan. I found an unused sleeve pattern from a project in my pattern library. I traced the sleeve that was a couple sizes larger than my usual shirt size, and took a few informal measurements. I reduced the curve of the sleeve cap, since it reached much higher over my knee than a boot would. I shorted the bottom appropriately, and flared it so that it would have some extra room around the top of my foot.
After cutting out pieces of moleskin from my modified pattern, I machine basted one and tried it on. I decided to bring the seam in a little tighter so that the boots would hug my calves better and not fall down (the moleskin had a bit of stretch, so the fit needed to be snug). I sewed the pattern pieces together down the sleeve seam, but left a few inches open at the end for my heel. I hemmed the bottoms and the heel vents, and then applied fusible interfacing to the round top of the boots to give them structure. Finally, I finished the tops of the boots with leftover red bias tape as an accent... and voila! Fake boots. To my relief, they crept down only a little as I danced; I had to fix them only a couple times during the night.
