A week before Thanksgiving seems like the perfect time for an overdue Halloween post, non?
I guess with two little girls it was inevitable that we’d end up with a princess ballerina Halloween situation at some point. I’m mostly amazed that I was able to pull it off considering I ordered all the stuff and then procrastinated until the week before. Also can we talk about Halloween costuming sans Joann’s?
So this year M decided she wanted to be Rapunzel, but her regular old Rapunzel dress up costume wouldn’t do. She wanted a mum-made one. Which the pragmatic part of me was like dude. But the hormonal part of me was like one day soon you’ll be 13 and think I’m the uncoolest person ever so sure let’s do it. C is too little to have seen any actual princess movies, but she likes pink so she picked Ariel’s pink dress. For some reason they were very insistent that I be Snow White.
I started off by ordered about 200 yards of tulle from Amazon. It’s.. not the best so I’m not going to link it here. It’s not really even tulle? It’s like the inbred cousin of organza meets tulle and it’s almost glittery but not in the best way. Anyway it was fine. It came in a giant roll pre-cut to 16″ wide so that’s how long the skirts are. Then I ordered a bunch of spandex and stretch velvet for the leotards.
Rapunzel was pretty straightforward. She has 5 layers of gathered tulle on the skirt bit, and then I decided to experiment with a bit of a tutu plate situation on top. And then I’d ordered a bunch of fake flowers for the wig so I decided to just throw a couple on the dress for extra oomph. And then a mom friend gave me a bunch of retired Disney branded costumes so I was able to harvest some official Rapunzel glitter tulle for even more oomph. I really liked the flowers on the skirt but they were vetoed.
Ariel was a bit tricky, mostly because she went to bed and I realized I hadn’t checked sizing. Thank god it just barely fits her. I can’t get over how cute the sleeves turned out. To get the little vent thingies I just put a piece of interfacing (sticky side up) over where I wanted the vent, sewed a little oval shape, trimmed right up to the seam allowance, and then turned the whole thing to the back. Make sure to clip the corners and then just press it down and the sticky side will adhere to the back.
I could only fit 3 rows of tulle on this tiny bum, and then I added a giant circle that I gathered up in 5 spots to make the skirt petals.
For Snow White, I decided to just make a leotard that I can actually wear and then make all the ish on it removable so I can actually use this thing after Halloween. I used my favorite high boat neck leotard pattern with navy velvet bodice and black contrast bottom bit. I’ll do a leotard post at some point but this one is an altered Jalie pattern.
And then I made a derpy little velvet basque situation to attach all the tulle layers to.
The sleeves are the same as Ariel’s, just larger and with a contrast inner sleeve in red chiffon. I probably should’ve used an organza but I wanted to use the rest of the fabric to make a red ballet wrap skirt. I went a little overboard and decided to actually draft the puffed sleeve with a sleeve sloper and everything.
And then just in case it wasn’t obvious who we’re supposed to be, I ordered a little Pascal plush and a little Flounder toy for them to carry around. I just stuck an apple in my coat.
We ended up having a pretty successful evening with almost no meltdowns! And now I can hack off the sleeves and gold trim (which is from the Katy & Laney tap shorts days!!) and have another leotard to wear to ballet class.
