Soon Hallowe'en shall be upon us, that hallowed festival of goblins and ghouls. Admittedly it is my favourite time of year, tied with Christmas, so of course I usually start thinking about it in July or earlier! But now it's already September and I've yet to make a start. Bad habits are hard to break... I know if I don't start on my costume now I'll never have it done!!!
At least I'm not the only one to think about these things early. A friend of mine started planning a Disney themed Hallowe'en Party all the way back in January!!! Now, for me, All Hallows is to be for scary things. Even if I chose not to be something terrifying like a zombie, or an evil clown with bleeding eyes, or Dead Riding Hood (I have a history of making small children cry with my costumes), I will still always go for the super villains. So for this Disney Party, who better to be than the Mistress of All Evil herself....? MALEFICENT!!! Mwahahahahaha!!!
Now, I have a terrible habit of buying all the materials I need early on, then putting everything off until the last minute, trying to cram in all my cutting and sewing on the week running up to Hallowe'en night. There have been years where I've still been sewing moments before leaving the house, and on occasion I've even pinned unfinished seams together with safety pins to wear an unfinished garment out anyway! That attitude is just not going to cut the mustard with this costume - this little procrastinator is going to have a schedule this time! I want to be done well before, as I'm making my other half's costume as well and giving an old one a bit of a makeover.
As I've said, I started mulling over this costume early. I started by looking at people who had done the costume before, and I found that their robes just didn't have the sheer volume and grandeur for which I so desperately hunger! This costume needs to be the real deal... Stately but imposing, with enough fabric to successfully hide a corpse in the train - you will note, she does do that in Sleeping Beauty! I had some completely harebrained ideas to compose this outfit that didn't resemble any sensible technique I'd ever encountered, but that was my mind trying to achieve the volume I needed without going overboard with cost. At one stage, I considered basing the design on graduation robes, but that wouldn't have given me the right shape. I had thought about doing something mental with 3 large semi-circle patterns sewn together, but that would have draped in a strange and hap-hazard way. As you can probably tell, I've been known to go a bit overboard for Hallowe'en... ^^;
After a bit of research, it turns out that Maleficent's costume is actually based upon a medieval houppelande, with an added stand-up collar and an opening at the front, and her horned headdress is a sort of warped version of a horned / butterfly hennin hat. This, of course, pleased me greatly as I finally had something solid to work with. The hat part turned out to be not so helpful; I'm just going to have to get creative with that one, but more on that later! I came across this houppelande pattern, which is drafted from a princess line dress pattern. As it happens, I don't have one of those, but I bought Simplicity 4940 as a base, and to maybe make some Lord of the Rings based dresses in the near future.
I will, of course, try to post as many pictures as possible of the whole process. I've decided to put a three or four feet train on my houpe to make sure I have all of the volume I so sorely desire. If I can get people to give up some old sheets, I may even do a 'muslin' mock-up to ensure that this amount is sufficient. I have never done that for a Hallowe'en costume, but there's a first time for everything!
The next thing to consider is the headdress... Again, I found very few that I felt look right. A lot of people put the horns straight up and down, but they curve back following the line of the skull. Also the methods available on tutorials to make the headdress have been some fabric and stuffing methods or plaster bandage, papier-mâché efforts. The latter two have some merit, but a lot of the versions I’ve viewed have been too chunky or either too tall or not tall enough. Maleficent has a very streamlined look to her head – the horns are about the same height of her head itself. Her face is slender and the horns look sleek, and I'm trying to determine a method which will allow me to achieve the correct shape with a lightweight material that isn't going to weigh very much which also doesn't look chunky –le sigh.
There are many ideas floating around my head, but currently I'm considering a skull-cap base and utilising the large amount of chicken-wire I have hiding in my craft stores to make the shape I need. If it turns out that it's too heavy (having trouble believing that, but it is metal) I may consider covering the form with duct tape and filling it with expanding foam, much like some of the DIY Dress Forms floating around do. After I take the duct tape and chicken wire off, the contents should be fairly light but will probably need neatening up with a sander. Then I just need to make sure I can get it on my head at the correct angle before wrapping them with black fabric to look like horns disguised as a hat.. Simples, yes? No? OK, this process seems a wee bit terrifying. But each costume is a learning experience, so here's hoping all goes smoothly.
Does anyone have any thoughts?
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