Queen of Hearts Costume, Part I: Design and Fabric

For Halloween this year my daughter decided she wanted to be a kitty– not really a surprise, since she loves cats, but it was a bit more difficult to figure out what our family Halloween costume would have to be to coordinate with a cat. Could we all be cats? What about different animals? It all seemed kind of boring.

Then a friend suggested that she could be the Cheshire cat (pink and purple cat, talk about tailor-made for my kid’s preferences!) and my husband and I could do Alice in Wonderland-inspired costumes. It sounded like a great solution. My husband could be the Mad Hatter and would just need to add an outrageous top hat and maybe a cravat to a regular suit. As for me, since I’m not blonde and have no intention of wearing a wig, being Alice was out. But I do love fancy gowns (and have plenty of random accessories lying around), so I decided to be the Queen of Hearts. All I’d need would be a red dress to applique some hearts on, a crown, and maybe a plate of fake tarts to carry around, and I’d be all set! I even had my old high school prom dress, which was bright red satin with a full skirt. Perfect!

Right?

Except I never make things that easy– somehow a plain old red dress just didn’t live up to my vision of what the Queen of Hearts would wear. It needed something else. More pizzazz. More contrast. Maybe something black and white. I turned to my old standby, eBay, to search for dresses I could modify for my costume, and came up with the following sketch:

To make the above dress I’m going to combine a black and white color-blocked dress from eBay with my high school prom dress from *cough, mumble* years ago.

 

The bodice of the red dress is covered with sparkly soutache trim in a vaguely floral design, and it comes with a matching shawl that’s soutache on one side and satin on the other, so I should be able to make the hearts and the hem trim out of the embellished side and the sleeve puffs out of the satin side.

The skirt is really full and has an extra layer of petticoat netting underneath, so I’m hoping I won’t need any additional support to get the shape I’m looking for.

Wish me luck!

 

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