Random Beauxbaton Person

"And not Fleur Delacour," Jenna hastened to qualify whenever anyone asked her who she was for Halloween.

Jenna is so funny. And so particular about what she does and doesn't want. If you remember, she's been Queen Susan three years in a row for Halloween, but each year she wore a different outfit from the Narnia movies. And each year, of all my children, hers is the most elaborate and challenging costume to make, but I do it because her choices stretch me to places I haven't been before. This year was no exception.

When she'd finally decided to be a Beauxbaton (they're the visiting wizarding school-for-girls in Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire), this is what I imagined:

And I thought, "Oh, that's easy. Satin and drapey and semi-circular and a back zipper and a little capelet over everything. I'd say 4 yards of satin should about cover it." 

So I went on pinterest and found loads of images of people cosplaying the Fleur-Delacour-Runway-Model-dress-look. Yessss. Inspiration. Solidarity. I can do this without losing my sanity, I thought. Maybe in time for Halloween, even!

Then Jenna disabused me of any hope. "No, not the dress. Who wants the dress? I want the uniform."

There's a uniform? I just bought FOUR yards of satin to make you that twirly, slinky, uberfeminine Barbie Doll frock! 

This uniform, apparently:

Shock! Horror! Fear! 

That is not a Halloween costume; it's a fitted THREE PIECE SUIT. With a fitted blazer with killer trim. And lining and interlining. And did I mention fitted?

"Don't forget the hat, Mom. That's the most important part."

Oh, right. The haaaaaat.

Well. 

I've never made a fitted blazer before, incidentally. Never had the need to, and always figured that if I had to someday, I'd just figure it out. After all, it can't be that different from a regular button-down shirt - you just make fancier lapels and overlap the button stands more and introduce extra ease in the right places since it's going to be worn over other clothes. 

Right?

It amuses me how deluded I let myself get.

Want even more self-mockery? Here's a confession: you know how, in this post, I was all "you MUST measure accurately" and "good measurements contribute toward 2/3 of drafting success" and "if you measure badly, you might as well not bother to do the actual sewing because it would be a disaster"?

Well, guess what - I thought I could slack off on my own advice, and I paid dearly for it.

See, before I made Jenna's costume, I made Kate's (coming up in next post) . And, because it was "just" a dress (har har), I grabbed Kate, wrapped a measuring tape around her body and guesstimated her waist, the rough width of her shoulders, and random positions of where her armscye might or might not be.

Snigger.

You'd think that my accompanying commentary might have tipped me off: "Er . . . stop wriggling. Stand still. Where on earth is your waist? Is this your waist? Okay, let's just say your waist is here!" or "Well, whatever! 15 inches, 15-and-a half inches, 25 thousand inches, what's the difference?!"

Snigger.

And then further red flags: re-grabbing Kate a few more times to re-measure her because the first draft and muslin looked "a bit weird". Yep. Both. I was already suspicious of the draft and still turned it into a muslin. What was I possibly expecting - magic?

Well, serves me me right because I ended up having to shift the waistline and reposition the zipper and straps, and use up almost all my seam allowance to make the "just a dress" work.  

So, by the time I got to Jenna's blazer, I was much humbled. I decided there would be no shortcuts or perfunctory "good enough"s this time; no, for a fitted blazer, I'd pull out all the stops - neck chain and waist string and actual measuring list and everything.

Much better, I thought.

What an interesting experience, making my first blazer! I'd heard it would be challenging, which I specifically imagined in two ways: fit and interlining/underlining. 

Fit is always a thing for me (and other people who custom-draft), so I was prepared to spend time adjusting for this anyway. Interlining, though, was new to me because we'd never needed interlining (for insulation) in tropical Singapore. Fortunately, this year's Halloween forecast was gorgeous - 60s and windless - so I eventually decided on just underlining (i.e. a simple supporting layer behind the outer satin, without the need for warmth). For this underlining I used a heavy linen that I'd bought for myself years ago. Linen has a glorious weight and drape and was perfect to stabilize this flyaway satin.

Here are the elements of the suit -

We decided to omit the inner shirt (hurrah) and make just the hat, blazer and skirt.

The skirt was just a semicircular skirt with a fitted waistband. Note the back hem extending lower than the front. When drafting for children, we often have to accommodate for rounder bellies and similarly full contours that affect how and where the final garment sits. Comfort is paramount, and sometimes this means waistbands sitting below bellies instead of on. This was the case with Jenna's skirt - she liked having the front waistband ride below her abdomen while the back sat squarely at the natural waist position at the small of her back. The front hem was correspondingly raised to compensate for this.

Here's the back zipper. This skirt was not lined. 

Here's the blazer.

We modeled it after the movie stills. I was going to add the standard welt pockets with flaps but there were none in the movie photos. 

The back had two vertical waist darts - pretty standard.

Here's the inside - fully lined, with the button stand faced. Again, nothing exciting.

The trim took a bit of work,

because of how the corners met on the lapel. If I'd had more time, I'd have wanted to do this piecing-style instead of the fold-over-and-hand-hem method I used.

The sleeves were fun. There was a slit at the hem, repeated in the inner sleeve lining that peeks out about a half inch below that.  

The two layers are separate at the hem so there is no pulling or tension spots visible from the outside.

Finally, the hat -

This was a quick sew. Rather than wool felt, we went for the cheaper (and warmer) alternative - 300 polar fleece. I used my own winter hat pattern from this post and tweaked it to shape and to incorporate a brim and that little pointy tip. Looking at the finished product, I think I'd have hand-stitched the double layers together at the brim instead of the machine topstitching I chose. 

Jenna didn't care; she said it was her favorite part of the suit.

Here she is with Meira, winter warrior. 

Kate was not available for this photoshoot - it's the first year we don't have a photo of all three girls in their outfits. Sniff. 

Meira

If you recognized the word in the title, you must have read Sara Raasch's Snow Like Ashes. The heroine of this trilogy is a feisty sixteen-year-old orphan named Meira who grows up among a group of refugee fighters after their kingdom is laid waste and enslaved by a megalomaniac Enemy King. 

She is battle-trained (but not allowed to actually fight, for reasons the book reveals later) and wields a chakram as her weapon of choice.  

Meira herself is never pictured on any of the covers (although the chakram is), and there wasn't a whole lot of conclusive description in the books of her outfits, so Emily designed her own look for Meira. All we had to go on were that Meira's kingdom was winter-esque and she had white hair.

Here are her sketches.

We pulled together several different elements to bring those sketches to life. These are the ones we sewed. First was a silver tank top, fitted with contoured side seams and back darts.

Next was "leather" chest armor. We debated between pleather (more realistic) and fleece (warmer and more comfortable) and fleece won. This was a fitted sleeveless half-bodice with an invisible zipper extending halfway up the back seam. Look - you can still see the chalk marks! I started some decorative saddle-stitching because the whole thing was so bland but gave up when I realized it did not improve the look in the slightest.

This is the skirt, inspired by icicles and frozen waterfalls. Emily wanted it like a tutu, with a waistband and bunches of nylon chiffon (or whatever it is that pettiskirts are made of). The bunches were cut as flat rectangles or squares of different sizes, with the longer ones at the sides and shorter ones toward the center front and back. One corner of each was secured between the layers of an open waistband which fastens around the waist with hooks and snaps. Set sufficiently close together, the bunches form a continuous-looking fabric.

Here is the ensemble. 

We later added a strip of brown knit fabric around the waist for a sash, and from which to hang the chakram.

And now - the chakram! It's cardboard (and therefore the best part of the costume)!

Very easy to make - just a circle with the center cut out, leaving a wavy handle. I stuck two layers of cardboard together (I cut a chakram shape out of each layer first, then glued them together). For added strength, I positioned the flutes of one layer at right angles to the other layer.

Then I paper-taped the edge to cover the corrugation and give it a smooth finish, like a real (but blunt) blade. By "paper-tape", I mean that I cut a strip of kraft paper (a grocery sack is a perfect kind of paper to use!) of the exact width of the double-layered chakram, and glued that all around the circumference.

It makes a really good frisbee, and flies beautifully (and does not kill).

Here's the final set (missing the brown sash, which I forgot to include in this shot) - the brown jacket was from Target, the grey gloves were Simplicity from JoAnn, and their light blue fingerless inserts were also from Target.

Funny story: Emily went trick-or-treating with two classmates, both of whom are avid readers like she is. One dressed up as Cinder from Marrisa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles and the other dressed up as (are you ready for this?) a character from a book she wrote herself. I cannot tell you enough how fantastic that is.

Meira, Cinder and Non-Commercial Character From Private Story are relatively unusual Halloween costume picks and therefore less recognizeable by most candy-supplying households, the girls thought. So they took their respective books with them in case they were asked to identify themselves. People reacted with astonishment to see the books sitting with their candy in their loot bags and asked, "Which house gave out books?"

Now wouldn't that have been an awesome candy-alternative? Trick or Treat! War and Peace, anyone?