About a month ago, I made a new costume for the larva for a photoshoot with Ed Pingol. We were wearing the fairies and obviously, she needed a costume too. =D
Photo by Cheryll
We considered the a princess Aurora costume briefly but I wasn’t sure how to make Aurora’s costume look cute on a baby. Plus everyone always does the Disney princesses. Judy suggested I do the dragon form of Maleficent which was tempting but I’m not very good with fabric sculpture. Then I remembered this chibi statue that we had gotten from SDCC a few years ago:
And who doesn’t love Maleficent? She’s so awesome!
So I’m going to get kind of detailed on the construction and this is mostly notes for myself so when the next kid rolls around (good grief), I’ll have some reference on what not to do. =D
For the bodysuit under the robe, I used Simplicity 1767. I’ve used this pattern twice now. I also used it for the baby flying bison costume and the sleeves on this bodysuit are too short. It’s even worse if you put “paws” on the bodysuit, so next time I need to remember to add some fabric on to the sleeves.
For the robe, I modified Simplicity 2900. (Can you tell Simplicity was on sale the weekend I went to buy baby patterns? =D) I used Robe C which is the kimono robe. I did a muslin mock-up to see how it would look on the larva. I needed to see where the sleeves should start once I adjusted them and how wide the original gown was so I knew how much expand the bottom circumference. I also made note of where to start the collar.
Then I pinned the pattern on to my final fabric and grabbed some chalk and started drawing my adjustments. Thankfully I got it all right on the first go because I was using stash fabric and only had 1.5 yards. ^^;
I made my own bias tape for the robe details and originally, I tried to get as many stripes on as the statue had but it looked really cluttered and messy so I decided to simplify and removed a few of them. The flames on the sleeves (which no one can see in photos) were fray-checked and sewn into the sleeves.
I did some more muslin mock-ups to pattern the collar. I had to keep checking on the larva to see if it was too big for her. It’s lined with fusible fleece which makes it stiff enough to stand up but very soft so hopefully not too irritating. She didn’t seem to mind but she’s kind of chill about the whole “being stuffed into a costume” thing.
This is the final robe. I was pretty happy with how it came out!
Oh and I added a separating zipper which was not in the original kimono pattern.
And then it was on to the horned hat. The hat kind of sucked to make. LOL
I started out with the hat from Simplicity 9784 but skipped the brim. I made the hat and then cut the front to form the point that Maleficent has. I actually ended up remaking the base hat a few times because it was too big the first time and it took me a few tries to get that point in front to a shape I liked. I also extended the panels in back to make them longer.
She outgrew the hat in less than a month so the lesson here is: make it a little bigger so they have room to grow. ^^;
The horns… well those REALLY sucked and I wasn’t really happy with the final shape but I ran out of fabric to re-do them (thankfully or I’d have been re-making the hat all night). The horns are basically a 4-sided shaped tube. I did a couple muslin mockups to get the shape and I should have put more extreme curves in so they would read better. Oh well… People can tell who she’s supposed to be and I guess that means the costume works.
Here is Bear modeling the Maleficent hat. =)
And a teaser pic from Ed. I can’t wait to see the rest of the set!
We took her to Fanime for a few hours too and walked her around the Artist Alley. That was actually her second con. We went to Big Wow ComicFest for an hour too to say hi to the 501st guys. Getting our geek training in early! =)
We’re thinking of getting an AA table at Japan Expo, the new con in Santa Clara. She won’t fit into this costume by then so I’m already thinking about what to make… maybe Totoro? She probably won’t be able to walk yet or I’d do Boo from Monsters Inc. Anyone got any other ideas?
