The Beginning of the End . . .

Holy cow. That is all.

Also, I know what I'm seeing for my birthday this year.

Ghosts of Halloweens past . . .

October is finally here!!!! Yay!!!! Okay; done with the crazy exclamation points.

October is probably one of my favorite months, not for the chilly weather or the beginning of sweater season, but for the one day a year when it becomes socially acceptable to dress up: Halloween. I don't know what I would do without this holiday; probably explode. I just wanted to post a little retrospective on some costumes of Halloweens past: come, walk down memory lane with me;)

Here's the year my friend K. decided her party theme would be Come As Your Favorite Literary Character . . . Dead. I wanted to do a Natural Form and a Sacque-Back Gown, so my sister and I went as Mina Harker and the Marquise de Merteuil.

I had a lot of fun with this sacque-back; it was a lot easier to do than I was expecting, though the ruched trim was kind of a nightmare. Still, I wish this was a better picture, because she looked fabulous.

This was Faery year. I had just started doing the Fantastickals makeup, so I made myself into a Peacock Faery, and my sister was the spirit of Autumn. Yep; I made a peacock feather headpiece. Yep, I burned my fingers pretty badly doing it.

This was technically for a New Year's do, but I still love this Voldemort get-up. This was before he appeared in the films, so I based it entirely on the books.The sides and back of that coat have beaded, embroidered celtic snake designs, as does the belt. It was a very heavy, warm costume, and I looked so scary that no one at the party wanted to talk to me!

This was our first year doing the Halloween parade in Boy's Town; Tab is Vampire Willow, and I did a sage dupioni Polonaise. Not my best effort; this was several years ago!

This is definitely from the Way-Back Machine! This is the year I went as Sally from my favorite "Nightmare Before Christmas". I was still living at home here! I made the dress out of quilted felt, and I made the yarn wig as well;)

And, here's the Giselle-Monster from last year;) I loved this dress, but it was such a production! See my dress diary for it here.

Well, I'm definitely looking forward to getting started on this year's dress; I hope the fabric arrives soon, or there will be some panicked posts to come . . .

Bellatrix Diaries . . . . part 2

Time for the next chapter in the Bellatrix dress diaries . . . mwah, ha, ha, ha! Okay, that didn't come off sounding as evil as I wanted it to . . . must have something to do with Monday morning . . . (shakes her evil laugh generator, sighs, moves on)

So, progress has been going swimmingly for Bellatrix; the dress went together a dream, as I chronicled in the last post. It only waits for the eyeletting on the sleeves, with Tab can now do since I reset my homepro tool with the correct die for it (I love my setting tool! If I could marry an appliance, we would be heading down the aisle. Maybe that's the solution to my singlehood? Hmmmmm.) The dress also needs some more decorsation and distressing, but it's pretty much complete. That leaves some other details.


The bird-skull necklace. I had a lot of fun sculpting this, maybe a little too much, if you want the truth;) Working from the original, pictured above, and a few pics of a repro by Snapdragon (thank you!), I got this:

I don't really wannt to antique it, but I may, just because it's very bright in pictures. It's slightly bigger than the original as well, but I liked it so much when I was done that I didn't want to start all over again and make a smaller one. You can't have too large a bird skull, I always say!

Onward to the leather corset. The under-base was black twill, put together like a standard under-bust corset and boned with 1/2" spiral boning and 1/4" white bones surrounding the grommets in back. Once the foundation was complete, I moved on to the leather patchwork outer-layer.

I started with several reference images where I highlighted the patchwork lines, and I used the excellent action figure for a decent 360 view. I then laid out my leather pieces, started drawing, and sewed each piece together on the machine. I worked in small sections, so as not to confuse myself with how some of the smaller bits went together! Once the entire thing was sewn together using a leather needle on my machine, I sat on my couch, popped in a movie, and started the laborious hand-sewing of all that decorating stitching. Using a wide-pointed leather hand-sewing needle (made with a spade point to create larger holes in the leather), I looped black soutache around each seam. It took several hours, but I was very happy with the results! Then, I hand-stitched the leather to the twill corset, following each seam so it was very secure and didn't pull or gap anywhere. The leather goes to to the grommets in the back, but stops just before them; I didn't want to try to grommet through two layers of twill and leather!

I'm quite pleased with what we've got so far, though the grey streaks in the wig reflect the light from the camera's flash too well! In person, they are much ore subtle than they appear here;) I'll probably post one more entry before this Saturday; just five days to Chicago Comic-Con!

Harry Potter: brief review (no spoilers)

Yep; saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince last night. For the benefit of my sister, who will be seeing it tonight, I won't give anything away. I only want to say: fabulous. I hated the 6th book; it was the only one I truly disliked of the series. Going into the film, I was truly hoping it would restore my faith in the story. I must say, it is one of those rare, fortunate times when I liked the film better than the book. Funny, well-acted (for the most part), powerful, and emotional, it was quite a film to add to the canon. Kudos to Alan Rickman for an always wonderfully layered, subtle, and in this case heart-breaking performance as Snape (my personal fave), and to an especially good Tom Felton (Malfoy). He had the tougher job this time around than Daniel Radcliffe, and he handled it beautifully. I must also give a shout-out to Michael Gambon; I have been firmly not in his camp as Dumbledore, feeling his portrayal was not as effective as the late, great Richard Harris. However, in this film, he was all he needed to be: wise, weary, controlled, and quietly powerful.

Well done. Onward to the end . . .

Bellatrix Begins . . .

So, I started working on Bellatrix on Friday, ad if the first workday is anything to judge by, it's going to go together surprisingly easily (knocking on wood as we speak). I happen to think my sister is going to look pretty fabulous next month;)

The pattern I chose for the dress is McCall's 5484. It's a lovely pattern that is unfortunately out of print now; I'm glad I picked it up when I did! After looking at refernce pics, I decided Bellatrix was probably in a twist-front dress; I have since realized from different shots that her dress is merely gathered in the front, but I'm not sorry I decided to go the twist-front route. It gives the front of the dress a very nice drape, and I like the detail at the bust. The pattern was very easy, and the dress and sleeves went together quickly.

If you look at the way her dress falls in the pic, especially down the center-front, you can see why I thought she was wearing a twist-front dress. Que sera sera, right?

As for fabric . . . what a pain in the butt. I searched everywhere for the spiral tonal black jacquard that it looks like they used for her, and the only one I found that was close enough came from a company that only sold to the UK. They promised to send me a swatch but I never heard from them, so I had to make other plans. Instead, I chose a black cotton crepe for the outside and a black silk habotai for the inside; the crepe gives it a wonderfully worn texture, and the silk flows beautifully. I jagged-cut the edges of everything, and my sister is going to go back and fray the threads; with the cotton and silk the threads should pull very nicely.


For the spirals I'm using a silver-leafing pen and a white paint pen. The silver-leafing goes on first and the white goes over that, to make several of the spirals pop. It needs more of them, but I got a start on it on Friday. Right now the sleeves are just pinned to the shoulders on my mannequin; they need to get grommets and laces.

As you can see from this pic, she has a hood on her dress, pointed at the top. I didn't have a pattern for this, so I just made one up:

It doesn't have to be functional, so I didn't worry too much about that, though she could wear it if she wanted to. It turned out longer than Bellatrix's hood, but I like the way it hangs.


The wig looks much whiter than it appears in real life! The flash on my camera reflected off the white spray I put in it; in reality, it is only highlighted with grey.

I sculpted and baked the bird skull necklace as well; I want to thank Snapdragon Designs for the reference shots of her own necklace, which I used as a reference for mine. It turned out bigger than the original (what is with me, lately?) but I like it, and so does my sister. It stays!

I'll keep you posted on progress; the corset is up next, and then finishing, with fraying, grommeting, and painting more spirals. Stay tuned . . . .

Harry Potter: the Exhibition!

Me in front of the Ford Anglia outside the exhibit. This is the only thing you're allowed to photograph!

Unless you've been living in a hole for the last few months, every Chicago Harry Potter fan knows about the exhibit opening soon at the Museum of Science and Industry: Harry Potter: the Exhibition. It's not open to the public yet, but my sister's boyfriend works at the exhibit, so we got to see it at a free Friends and Family preview on Saturday! Squee!!!!

There are absolutely, positively NO PICTURES ALLOWED. This was particularly hard for me; my camera was practically burning a hole in my purse as I came within inches of original costumes! On display: Snape's robes, which are every bit as fabulous as I suspected, in silk faille and wool; all the major professors' robes, including Slughorn, Madam Hooch, Professor Sprout, Professor Umbrage (matching shoes!) and a scale reproduction of Hagrid's clothes inside his hut! The entire exhibit is a Potter fanatic's dream, and the flow is very good; you pass through the dormitory, the teacher's area, the Quidditch room, Hagrid's hut, the Dark Arts room, and finally, the Great Hall (with candles suspended overhead!).

The Dark Arts room was the most impressive to me; I salivated over Lucius Malfoy's costume (pewter snake clasps on his fur robes!), shivered in front of the full-size Angel of Death sculpture (when you stand in front of it, there is a directional sound cue with Voldemort whispering in your ear!); and stood transfixed at the life-size, suspended Dementor, which is just as scary in real life as it looks on screen.

From the opening Sorting Hat ceremony, to the closing views of Dumbledore's and McGonagall's costumes, I was blown away by the detail and scope of the entire exhibition. Even the gift shop is impressive, done up as Diagon Alley! These pics are taken from the site, and are the only ones available right now. Go and see the exhibit when it opens April 30th; you won't be disappointed!

Holy $h@*. New Harry Potter trailer. That is all.

This. Looks. Awesome. And, truly, Half-Blood Prince was not my favorite of the books, so that's saying something. I cannot wait until July 15th.