Happy Birthday Eleanor and a Halloween sneek peak!

Happy belated 11th birthday to our sweet Eleanor! So hard to believe you are 11 now!!! She's modeling this year's Halloween costume. The main part of the dress is made from Simplicity 1557, which is actually a Merida dress, but I just used the main part for what we wanted. The sleeves are from Simplicity 5520. I would have used that pattern for the entire dress, but it only goes up to size 8. Simplicity 1557 is the only pattern of this style that goes up to size 14. A lot of them go to size 8 and then start with adult sizes. While Eleanor can wear some adult sizes, the one pattern I purchased was just wrong in so many ways, so this was a much better "fit" for her.  I cut a size 12 based on her measurements, but I think a 10 would have been a better fit. It's not all bad in that because it's big, she can easily wear warm clothes under the dress for trick-or-treating.

The dress is a black costume satin from JoAnns-very slippery and hard to sew! The overlay and sleeves are made from a drapey tulle like fabric from the Halloween section of JoAnns. Eleanor picked it out herself. I made two dresses, put the spiderweb one on top of the black one and then treated as one dress when adding the zipper, neck facing and the sleeves. We attached cloth-like spiderweb to the neckline from the dollar store. The hat is one we already had, but I need to get a bigger one as this is meant for a smaller child. On the hat is the cutest owl we purchased at the dollar store. Finally we made a belt from cording from the drapery section at JoAnns and added a spider belt buckle that I made from a spider we purchased from a costume store and glued a tough twisty tie inside to attach to the knot of the belt. I'm tempted to find some little spiders and glue them in the center of all the webs. I don't think I have the time and patience to do that, but I think it would really add something!

On a fairworthy scale from 1 to 10 meaning 1=absolutely unfairworthy and 10=totally fairworthy I would rate this dress a 7. The invisible zipper gave me a bit of trouble so it's not as smooth as it could be a the base of the zipper-there's a pucker, but the overlay fabric is difficult to rip out without ripping, so I tacked it down the best I could. The hem is a bit wonky in the back, but since I may re-hem this dress for fair to cut off what is sure to be dirty, I'm not too worried at the moment.

Next on the docket-Tinkerbell and Princess Leia.