So, as some of you may know I love this holiday and especially love designing and making Chloé's costume. It is so much fun to dress up every year and become a different person and I even get caught up in it all with my own outfit. This year she wanted to be the "corpse bride", an animated character from the Tim Burton movie. We took inspiration from the movie and the characters outfit, a wedding dress with a lace bodice, tattered edges with a slit up the front, and a veil with distressed flowers on the head dress. Since she is a corpse bride she also has one leg and one arm that is a skeleton and a bouquet of flowers looking a little worse for wear.
We always head downtown to "Dressew" on Hastings for good deals on fabric and trims. They have a downstairs room with some fabrics as low as $2 a meter. We were looking for white or cream satin fabric for the dress but once Chloé found some in a grey color she was sold. "You know what Mommy? Why can't it be a grey wedding dress?" asked Chloé. Why not indeed and we moved onto choosing the tulle and head dress for the veil. The major score of the day was finding some incredible but inexpensive lace trim to sew onto the bodice. I was heading over to Vancouver Island to visit my parents and brothers family for the Thanksgiving holiday so I brought all the supplies hoping my sister in law, Leanne would help me with the sewing.
Leanne is crazy talented in the sewing department and has helped me in the past with my projects. We decided it would be best to not try and alter some of the patterns I had so we went shopping for a new one that ended up as a separate bodice with a long flared skirt . Once we got home Leanne helped me lay out the pattern and cut it. It was easy enough to alter the pattern to achieve the slit in the front and have the skirt longer in the back. Now it was time to sew and we had both the serger and regular machine set up on the kitchen table. Leanne said " Why don't you start on the skirt Michele and I will work on the bodice" This made me secretly very happy as I knew the top would be a challenge with the fitted yoke, lining, and lace trim. I started sewing up the skirt and making the veil from a free pattern I found on the Internet. As I like to say ... "goggle is your frieeeend". We worked on it all day and afternoon. The lace trim although very beautiful was giving us a lot of trouble as we tryed different ways to lay it down onto the bodice. After a lot of discussion and experimentation Leanne and I decided on a lovely design. Leanne had pinned it down and I was to hand sew it on when I got back to Vancouver. Once she started sewing the top together her incredible talent and drive came bursting out and the next thing I knew the lace was all sewn on!! Mom and Dad saved the evening by bringing turkey dinner leftovers over to Russ's so we could keep sewing and by bedtime the dress was completely sewn together. A huge thank you goes out to Leanne for all her support, encouragement, and talent. It was a really fun day working together on this cool project.
Once we got back home in Vancouver Chloé and I put the finishing touches on her costume. We distressed the head dress, veil, skirt, and bouquet, made a skeleton glove and legging, and added silver sparkly swirls and a tattered edge to the skirt. We decided not to distress the top as we first thought. It had just worked out so beautifully and we felt it would be a shame is she could not wear it again for a special occasion.
I went to the local Value Village to search for my costume and came up with a super cool greek style dress for $10. Waited until the wigs went 50% off at London Drugs before I broke down and bought one.
So here are some photos of Chloé at her school playing toss the bouquet with her friends.
I spent the afternoon at school and helped out with the "Centers" where the children do crafts and other fun activities. Chloé made this fun Halloween mobile.
After school we headed down to the Italian Garden on the PNE grounds for a photo shoot.
Here are two of my favorites
And a few that Chloé took of my dressed as Athena the Goddess of Wisdom.
That evening we met up with Scot for dinner at a local greek restaurant then joined Lysette, Lauren, and Cyrus for trick or treating on Trinity Street.
All in all Halloween 2007 rocked.
