Time for more costumes! Last year I went to the Danny Elfman Tim Burton Movie concert and dressed up like Jack Skellington buy wearing a striped dress and jacket. This year’s concert is only going to be Nightmare Before Christmas, my all-time favorite Tim Burton/Danny Elfman movie and Amber is coming with me! She wanted to be Jack, so I will be dressing up like Sally. I’ve made a Sally costume before so I wanted to try do something some different.
I bought these two dresses on clearance at Walmart and only wore the burgundy one once so I thought they would be a perfect start for our costumes. I needed to be easy and fast because I only had two nights to work on them. I started with the Jack costume since it was going to be the easiest, or so I thought. I bought white fabric paint in a squeezable bottle and started painting on stripes. I did a little of each stripe at a time and I didn’t want them to be a perfect straight line. By the time I reached the bottom of the dress my hand was hurting from squeezing the bottle and the dress form wasn’t there causing the line to fade as it got lower. Several hours or a few Halloween movies later it was complete and set aside to dry.
I bought these two dresses on clearance at Walmart and only wore the burgundy one once so I thought they would be a perfect start for our costumes. I needed to be easy and fast because I only had two nights to work on them. I started with the Jack costume since it was going to be the easiest, or so I thought. I bought white fabric paint in a squeezable bottle and started painting on stripes. I did a little of each stripe at a time and I didn’t want them to be a perfect straight line. By the time I reached the bottom of the dress my hand was hurting from squeezing the bottle and the dress form wasn’t there causing the line to fade as it got lower. Several hours or a few Halloween movies later it was complete and set aside to dry.
 |  |  |
Now time to work on the Sally costume; this was a little more difficult because I wanted to create the patch look of her dress using scraps of fabric. I started with the largest piece on the top and used quilt binding spray to tack it on, then sewed it in place. I repeated the process until all of the dress was patched together.
 |   |
I repeated the process until all of the dress was patched together. I created the sleeves by cutting out an oval shape and pinning in place before sewing on, and then cut the sleeves into shape.
 |  |
After all of the sewing on the Sally dress was completed I washed and dried to remove the quilt binding spray before I started recreating the patterns using black fabric paint in a squeezable bottle. For the bigger patterns, like the stripes and circles, I squeezed some of the fabric paint in a bowl and using a paint brush created the patterns. Once complete I set aside to drive overnight. Something to note before I began using the fabric paints I covered my dress from with a trash bag to prevent it any damage.
 |  |
I was really impressed with how the costumes came out and I am looking forward to using this method again; as for now we are ready for our concert!
