Love my Lists: Halloween 2013: A Good white witch

For my oldest daughter, when she said she wanted to be a white witch, I thought that sounds so familiar. The phrase "white witch"...then I realized, it sounded familiar because that's what the evil lady/queen Jadis in the Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe was called. I asked if that's who she wanted to be or if it was just a witch dressed in white rather than black. She said Jadis, so I started pinning movie shots to inspire me as I planned her costume. And, having not found another great at Goodwill for the dress or fur mantle she wears in the movie...and not even icicle ornaments in the (yes - already out at walmart) Christmas section (to make the icicle crown), I pushed her costume off til last.

I'm glad I did, because she told me later, she wanted to be a good witch, not a bad witch. (Yep, like me...we only want the fun good parts of halloween - dress up and pretend and candy...no evil yucky grossness). Glenda the good witch.

So, I looked up Glinda (Glenda?) the good witch from The Wizard of Oz (who wears a very fluffy pink dress that would be so expensive to make and I have nothing to pull from like free fabric or a petticoat or anything for a base). Fortunately, what also came up were the NEW good witch pictures of a younger Glenda from OZ the Great and Powerful. (Who happens to be wearing a much calmer dress and has long flowing blond hair) Win!

So, that's what we're going with. She's outgrown the dress up stage and growing too fast to reuse a costume in a few years, I'm not wanting to spend much on her costume...so we're not aiming for perfection. Just a close enough resemblance to please.

She'll wear this dress I've had a few years (it's one of those shirred tube top style dresses - I bought it purely for taking photos of our family on the beach all in white a few years ago.

but it really doesn't flatter me (even less so in the past year or so) - so if it gets a little Halloween chocolate on it, I'm not gonna cry...and it's so stretchy that it's snug enough to stay on my nearly 9 year old.)

Under the dress, she's wearing a gold shirt. I couldn't find one at my normal 2nd hand places, but Hancock's came through with this awesome gold shimmery fabric that was on sale for 3.49/yard, so for under $5, a shirt. (It is see through so I cut up an old white t shirt of mine that got stains while in the laundry to line the front/back. And the shirt looks cute on her by itself - that's what I love about her costume - it's just another shirt she can wear later, so I don't feel like I spent any money on her costume.)

The feathery V shape she's got going on down the bodice - yeah, we're skipping that. My daughter said no thanks.

For the wand, she painted a dowel gold and hot glued on some trinket (is it odd that my kids find trinkets lying around the house? Clearly, our "baby" is no longer a baby. We are so far from baby proof these days!)

I think she did a great job. (I did do the hot glue part for her)

Then, for the crown, we were going for something like what we saw online:

So, I had already gone to the fabric store more than enough and I wanted to make progress on this right then, so going with what I've got. I had some sheer fabric (I keep leftover "fancy fabrics" in a gallon zip lock bag - now in 2 gallon zip lock bags for occasions just such as this). And I had some leftover stabilizer. (Some gold tissue lame would have been nice, but didn't have any of that.)

I also had some fusible webbing ("wonder under" - this paper with a web of sticky stuff you iron on and after you peel the paper back, you iron that fabric to another fabric - kind of turns the fabric into a sticker to fuse two fabrics together). That wasn't too good of an explanation - might want to google it. :)

I used this wonder under to fuse a layer of sheer white and sheer yellow to my stabilizer (heavy weight interfacing). Then, I cut out the pieces for the crown from there.

I printed out a bunch of pentagons in 3 sizes (I did a quick and sloppy job of making them all touching for easier tracing/cutting. Here's a pdf of what I used, and it's not fancy or evenly aligned, but it is already made for you!)

I cut out each of the 3 rows of pentagons and traced around that onto the back of the interfacing (not the side with the sheers fused). Once I did that, the lines dividing those pentagons were easy to draw in place.

Then, I just cut them all out.

And arranged them how I liked them over a piece of felt (it's grey).

I have this annoying clear plastic-y thread that I can't remember the name of right now nor why I originally got it, but I have never had luck with using it, but for some miracle it worked for me Saturday afternoon.

(I had stopped during the kids' quiet time to read my scriptures...so maybe it was a little blessing for me.) :)

Anyways, I sewed a bunch of lines to keep it all together - first across the bottom (where they all were based), then up at semi-regular intervals, then around all the points at the top...then I decided to go along all the points. It was a lot of stopping, put the needle in the fabric, pick up the presser foot and turn, drop it again and sew til the next turning point. But it really only took me about 5-10 minutes to stitch it all down.

I cut away all the felt that stuck out except for a bit at the bottom to fold around the wire base of the crown.

Then, I fought with a children's hanger to shape it to the size circle she wanted.

Those little hangers are tougher than you'd think

I couldn't quite get all the pokey parts to lie flat even with all my jewelry tools.

I even tried to clip off the excess sharpness so there was less of it...

next time I'll use my husband's REAL wire cutters.

Moving on...

I put the overlapping wires towards the front so the back of the crown is smooth and won't get caught in hair and I folded the excess felt over the wire to cover those parts.

(Another idea would be to sew on a curved piece/strip of fabric - preferably cut on the bias so it's got some stretch - and sew it right sides together at the base of the crown and then flip it towards the back, going over the wire and stitching it down in the back.)

Then, I used a zipper/piping foot to get as close as I could to the wire.

(Note, the overlapping areas will be so big, that you just can't get that close - unless you have better wire tools that I have, which is likely. I just picked up the foot and moved it or sewed farther away at those points.)