Post-Halloween Post: Part 1

I've been making my own Halloween costumes for about four years now, and each year I get a little bit more frugal (meaning not spending hundreds of dollars on so many things before actually figuring out what to do) and a little bit wiser (meaning knowing where to find certain things for really great prices, or even for free!).  This year I wanted to keep things more simple, and I had had the idea in my head for several months before I actually had the time to get started on my costume, and that idea was: Belle.  Most of the time, when one does Belle for Halloween, they do the big, foofy yellow ballroom dress that she dances in with Adam (the Beast).  I favor her simple frock, or her "before" dress, as everyone was calling it.  It goes with the song in the beginning of the movie that has the lyrics, "... but behind that fair facade, I'm afraid she's rather odd.  Very different from the rest of us, that Belle."  I have always felt this way, and have many times been called odd, weird or different, and I used to think that it was a bad thing, but now I embrace it!  Belle has always been my favorite Disney princess because she is the one I could identify with the most, and this year I was her for Halloween!  So enough about me; let's get to the costume!

I started shopping around for material or for a dress that would be easily altered into Belle's "before" frock.  I ended up finding this prom dress in the Halloween section of a Goodwill and got it for $5!  It totally had rhinestones and beadwork all down the front of it that I had to take out before I even thought about altering it.  

That, alone, took me a good few hours, so I watched me some "Gilmore Girls" while working on it.

I took out all of the little stitches that were holding the bottom "swooshes" of material in place and I cut off the top part of the dress, so that I was left with a skirt that was about 10 inches too long.  I measured and cut according to my height and waist, and then I hemmed the skirt and sewed a folded strip of a white bed sheet that I also got from Goodwill for, like, $2, onto the bottom hem of the undercoat of the skirt.  That was the easy part.

The hard part was next, trying to figure out how to make the part of the dress from the waist, up.  Eventually, I figured out how to use the leftover material from the extra-long skirt that I had to make the part that wrapped around me, and then I simply folded some of the same-color material and sewed it on for the dress straps.  The finishing touch of the dress was sewing a zipper on the back so that I could actually get in and out of the dress, although I couldn't do it on my own, and things got interesting when no one was around to help me zip or unzip!

After the actual dress was done, I cut and sewed the apron out of the same white bed sheet from Goodwill, and I got the white shirt from Deseret Industries for $2.  The shirt was long-sleeved, so I had to cut and hem the sleeves.  There was a big froofy (yes, I like this word) ribbon design on the front of the shirt that I had to take off, as well as the buttons, and then I sewed open the collar to make it look more square.  Adding the finishing touches of the blue bow, the hair and makeup, and my basket and book props, and I was good to go!

PS, I think this is what Belle would have looked like had she been drawn in the 21st Century...

Stay tuned for my next post on my brother's costume!