Honey is a Fairy!

The Making of Honey's fairy costume. 

Part 1

 

The first thing I did was draw up a few very rough ideas of costumes I wanted to make. There were a few options in there like a cinderella dress and a snow white costume, but the one I settled on was the fairy costume. 

 

Once I had an idea of what I was going to be making I made a pattern out of wrapping paper based on the shape of Beau's tuxedo, but scaled up to Honey size. 

I then used the paper pattern, which is very VERY simplistic, to cut out the same shape in cotton for the lining, and a stretchy textured fabric for the outer layer that can be seen.

 

 

 

 

This photo (above) is the lining cut out and pinned to the stretchy fabric (which is underneath)

 

I pinned them together with the sides that will eventually be facing out, sandwhiched in the middle.  The reason I did that is so once I have sewn it up, I can turn it out the right way and most of the stitches, as well as the seams,  will be hidden.

 

 

In the above shot I've folded the material in half to get an idea of what it will look like once its on.  I've cut the sharp corners off the tail end so it's a nicer rounded shape. 

The chest strap is so long because Honey was going through a massive growth spurt when I designed it so I figured I'd cut the chest straps to size when I got closer to finishing.

You can see that the stretchy fabric is already rolling up from the edges and pulling away from the lining.

The stretchy fabric was very difficult to work with for all aspects of the costume. With the cutting process it was hard to cut accurately to shape due to the stretchiness.

With pinning and then sewing it to the cotton lining it tended to want to slip around and slide away from where it was meant to be. Not what you want on your first attempt at costume design!

I will definately not be mixing stretchy with not stretchy again in a hurry!