Halloween - Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Mad Hatter costumes.

It would have been nice to post this before Halloween, getting in the true spirit of things, but I was so busy making the damn thing, I just didn't have time.

Better late than never, right?

Here goes then. Knowing we were spending a couple of days at Alton Towers for Halloween with a group of friends, Adam and myself decided on fancy dress costumes several months in advance. We dressed up last year (Zombie, and Zombie Where's Wally) but this year Adam got it into his head he wanted to go as The Mad Hatter.

After watching Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, I decided, okay, I can do that. The craft & costume thing, unsurprisingly, is left down to me. I decided to go as Alice, seeing as we wanted to go as a sort of couple, ever though they're not quite a couple in the film, it's the closest we could manage!

I started off looking on eBay and in local charity shops, for a simple blue dress. Unlike the traditional Alice, Tim Burton's Alice wears a long, slightly Victorian style gown in pale blue. I thought this would be the most simple, easy bit of the outfits. But no.

Because seemingly, you can't just buy a plain ol' blue dress. I couldn't even get a white one that I could dye blue. Nothing was quite right. After chatting to my Mum, she offered to make a dress. Yup, that's right, make one. And here's where the excessive effort begins.

She found this Simplicity Pattern online at  http://www.sewingworld.co.uk/Simplicity_Costumes.html and though a jacket and skirt, it was the right style, down to the ruffle on the skirt, and she figured she could adapt the jacket into a short sleeved bodice. 

 We bought quite a range of fabrics in the end, due to some of them not being quite right, and sadly, the organza I bought for the top layer just wasn't working. Instead, we decided to go for a double layer of the lining fabric, which I'm glad about, as it was definitely easier to embroider than the organza would have been.

And so on to that touchy subject of the embroidery.

Using examples from the Flickr set here http://www.flickr.com/photos/40787728@N05/sets/72157621835279288/with/3756798119/ and in particular, this photo

(image taken from the above website, please note, this is not my dress/photo)

I used it create my own design for the dress, drew the images free hand, then traced through the top layer of my dress, and hand embroidered the whole thing. Now my dress was SIX METRES wide round the bottom of the dress - a whole load of fabric went into making the thing, and my Mum did a beautiful job, but that meant I had to embroider this tricky, complex pattern over and over until I'd filled six metres worth. And boy, did that take a while! I actually ended up working out a little schedule, and was literally coming home from work and embroidering at least 3 hours a night, as it was the only way I could get the dress finished in time. But I'm so pleased with the results.

I know I didn't have to do this, I could have painted it on, pen, used lace instead, left it off entirely, but my Mum had put so much effort into making the dress, I wanted to add the details too. But it took 71 hours in total, just to do this bit, and it was just a small detail on the dress!

I was lucky in that I managed to find the exact same buttons as were on the original dress, so I was really pleased about that, and I added the cream lace and black ribbon to the neckline, which was similar to the original dress.

It's not exactly the same, the fabric is slightly different, the details are a little different, but it's so much closer than a store bought dress and I'm really proud of all the work that I put into it. And I can't thank my Mum enough for making the actual skirt and bodice for me. 

LOL at my face!

I also made the matching handwarmers - from a baby's velour jacket I picked up at a charity shop and some fake fur - again, different to the thin, net type ones in the film, but I knew I would be spending 12 hours outside in late October, I was trying to do my best to keep warm!

Adam's Mad Hatter costume took even longer to make. I bought in things like the brown velvet jacket and the pinstripe trousers, but everything was customised.

I added a trim detail to the cuffs of the jacket, embroidered a bird patch from scratch to go on the breast of the jacket, added a pink scarf and multitude of ribbons to the pockets, like the original. The wing-tip collared shirt we dyed pink, the neck scarf was made too, and the trousers were hemmed short, adding the spare fabric from the hems in the sides to create a small flare, putting wire in the bottom of the hem to create the funky shape, and then embroidering the trouser leg too. These took days to do!

It was difficult to get a really good image of the trouser embroidery, there was little online, but I did my best!

The cotton reel bandolier was also tricky. We had to make it secure enough that we could whizz around on rollercoasters without it coming off or snapping.

Lots of string and wire later, we managed to tightly secure all those cotton reels onto the gold chain. We cut down a thin leather belt to attach at the back, which is how it fastens on.

Even the lace cuffs and hand warmers were copied as well as I could from Johnny Depp's costume. Oh, and one pink stripey sock, and one one red one! We really did our best to copy as much as we could. Down to the orange hair (coloured hair spray, plus lots of backcombing and hair spray) and huge eyebrows, which I made with roving, softly needle felted at one edge of them.

The hat was a bit of a triumph.

I wish I'd taken photos of the various stages, but I was getting a little stressed out at how long everything was taking, and how little time I had left to complete everything in. Made from card, paper mache, foam board, fabric, net curtain and spray paint, the hat took around 10 days to complete over weekends and evenings.

I sprayed it with black, brown and gold spray paints, and added the details like the salmon coloured scarf, the peacock feather, ribbon patch trim, hat pins and of course, the 10/6 card. For this, again I tried to copy the original as close as possible, right down to the font of the numbers, and burning the edges of the card.

It was ridiculously heavy, but bless him, Adam wore it all day long. I'm so proud of how it turned out!

We had such a fantastic day on Halloween, and luckily, the costumes turned out great - we even got asked for a couple a photos from strangers!

The only downside was that it prompted us to start talking about next year's costumes! Although, I guess a little part of me is excited about the idea - just give me a few months break first!