Ok, wrong season to be blogging about a Halloween costume. But we’ve been busy, winter flew by, and somehow it’s nearly spring. And what’s more springy than a butter-yellow, nature-inspired fairy costume? Bam! Off-season blog post justified.

Since she learned to talk, Avery made it clear that she was all about yellow, so it made sense that her third Halloween costume would be an variation on that theme. So I raided my stash for all of the yellow remnants I could find. Fortunately I bought a lot of yellow fabric back in my hoarding days, including a beautiful piece of marigold silk from The Fabric Store, some leftover cotton gauze from my Stevie blouse, and some scraps I had leftover from other projects. I only had to purchase some additional fabric for the wings, which required something stiff and gauzy. Here’s a recap of my process:

Inventory, plan, sketch

As I mentioned above, I took stock of the fabric I already had to avoid buying too much more. I then sketched out plans for the skirt (self-drafted and fairly simple) and determined that I would need to purchase a pattern for the top. I decided to attach the wings to the top/ vest so that I wouldn’t have to add additional straps (which I thought would disrupt the lines and look a little funky), so had to create a sturdy, heavier top to accommodate them.

I took a little trip to Joann’s and settled on Simplicity 1786 — a simple vest that I could easily alter to include Velcro closure. For the wings, I planned to use a technique I learned making costumes in high school theater: basically, a big wad of gauzy synthetic shaped into four wing-shaped bows and supported by light jewelry wire.

Prepare and Cut the Fabric

For the skirt, I used cardstock to create a simple template, and cut out about fifteen “petals,” alternating between leftover rayon and marigold silk that I found at The Fabric Store a few years back. I wanted the rayon to match the silk a bit more closely, so I used turmeric to dye both fabrics and get them a little closer in tone. I’m not a natural dye expert by any stretch, but I found that turmeric tea + extra powdered turmeric + hot water, soaked for about 15 minutes and rinsed, worked well. I used a serger to finish each petal before dying them, so the thread ended up matching, too.

I decided to line the vest instead of using bias tape. This of course made the process more complicated and required cutting double pieces (cotton gauze and rayon), but it made the final piece sturdy enough to balance the wings that would be attached later.

Sew and ASSEMBLE

The vest was fairly easy to assemble, but the skirt took a little more finessing. After attaching each petal to the waste band, I folded and inserted the elastic, but boy howdy that took about 45 minutes (I despise inserting elastic—I still haven’t figured out how to do it efficiently).

I’m not sure how to describe the wing-making process (I probably should have made a video), but basically for each wing I folded a large rectangle of fabric, inserted a string of medium-weight jewelry wire at the fold, then molded it into a leaf shape cinched at the base. Once all four were complete, I attached them at the back center of the vest, covered with a small circle of the cotton gauze, then finished with marigold embroidery thread (see pictures below).

I used fabric scraps, naturally molted feathers, and a single seashell to created the hairpiece, which I held together with embroidery thread and a hot glue gun.

All in all, it turned out pretty epic, and Avery was the happiest (and possibly only) little yellow fairy in town.