November 11, 2008

How to make a flapper dress

I made Clara's Halloween costume this year. My coworker had suggested Clara dress up like Clara Bow for Halloween and we ended up deciding on a flapper to go with Emmett's '20s newsboy outfit.


I prepped Clara by showing her youtube videos of flappers. She was quite excited about the dancing.

There were a bunch of pre-made flapper dresses I found online but I was too cheap to buy one for $30. But in the end I spent about $50 on supplies for Clara's dress! Oops.

I did all of this at the last minute about 3 days before Halloween without a pattern so I just had to guess on what I would need. This is roughly what I bought:


7 yards of red fringe (this was probably about a yard more than I needed)
3 yards of sequins (I chose a thick, zigzag band of them; also much more than I needed)
a boa
2 yard string of pearls
feathers (I bought a couple packs of these in different sizes)

I deconstructed one of Clara's sundresses that had a little slip underneath so that it provided a tube shape in her size and then cut it to the length I wanted it. Then used Elmer's glue to attach the rows of fringe, starting from the bottom, spaced about an inch and a half apart. (I started out handsewing it but decided that was just craziness. And I was too lazy to set up the sewing machine!)


Tips:
1. place a cutting board inside the dress to keep the glue from sticking to the bottom of the dress.
2. use a hairdryer to dry as you go along.


Glued a row of sequins along the top and then tried it on Clara to figure out where to attach straps. I handstitched those on to make sure they'd be super secure.


She wore a long-sleeve white undershirt to keep her warm, white tights, black patent-leather mary janes, a white boa, and the string of pearls looped around her necks a few time. I tried to glue the sequin string to a headband she had but it made the headband too stiff to stretch on to her head so we just skipped that idea and put a headband on with a white feather stuck in it! We also penciled a mole on her chin for good measure.



More photos here: Halloween Photos on Smugmug

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