Halloween Costumes

I realized that Halloween was nearly a week ago. So I better get posting on it before it’s Christmas. Although if you’ve been shopping in the past week you’ll know according to retailers it already IS Christmas.

Anyway for Halloween my sister and I went as Tough Cookies from the movie Whip It or really just girl scout themed roller derby girls. This is the photo we used for inspiration.

For Natalie’s costume we made a princess seamed button down dress similar to Ellen Page’s costume. I used Simplicity Pattern 4470. It’s out of print now but I found it online for about $4. I pretty much directly followed the pattern but did not do the back darts as we used a belt instead. Also rather than sewing the side and princess seams all the way to the hem we left them open and pressed the seam allowance.

Natalie liked the dress so we plan on un-costuming it. So I tried to avoid doing any permanent damage to the dress. We’ll also need to redo the sleeves as I did a crappy job easing them in. She took her costume home with her so I don’t have a photo of it.

I based my own costume off of Drew Barrymore’s. For the vest I used Franzi from Burda Style, which is free. I lengthened it a bit and didn’t line it.

For the skirt I decided to try my hand at pattern making. The fabric is dark green flannel I bought for about $2.50/yd. I designed the top of the skirt in illustrator using my measurements. It’s got front and rear darts and a side zipper. It ended up being a bit too big so i took it in about an inch. For the pleats I used a rotary cutter to cut 2 6″ wide strips. I then played around until I found a pleat configuration that I liked (3 in front and 3 in the back). Then I measured and ironed my box pleats. I basted the top of the pleats and pinned the bottom before attaching to the skirt. There is no hem but i did run a line of zigzag when the fabric frayed a bit.

After the sewing was done we salvaged badges from old boy scout uniforms my mom had around the house. Altogether we probably spent about $40. Then we needed accessories. It was hard to find green tights but Natalie finally found some at Marshalls.

Then we needed pads and helmets. I thought the helmets were necessary to make the costume look like roller derby vs sexy girl scout. I ended up buying 2 cheapo kids helmets and using green krylon to paing them. Total cost $25. For the “wristguards” and “elbow pads” I cut up black tube socks. We were able to find knee pads. We opted not to wear rollerskates as we didn’t think bars would let us in wearing them.

We went to New York City and it poured! We were so glad to not have skates and the helmets kept our heads dry(ish)! We got a good reaction from people who thought our costumes were cute.