Broken Doll

So Halloween has been and gone for another year, here in Australia not everyone celebrates Halloween and it has really only been in the past ten years that it seems (at least to me) that the retailers are trying to make a buck out of this particular day. 

This year Miss Loofie had an invite to a Halloween party, so of course she needed a costume.
First she wanted to be a ghost: yeah the sheet over the head kind (yawn).  Then she wanted to be Corpse Bride, an interesting challenge, but still a big nope from me.  Finally I suggested she go as a Broken Doll and a creepy haunted broken doll at that. I had a vision of what I wanted to achieve and I also decided to enter the costume in the Urban Threads Halloween costume contest. 

I started with Mccall's pattern M6187 It is a really nice old fashioned dress. The costume is made out of black drill and white poplin from Spotlight, pretty much everything else has was from my stash of thrift shop goodies.

I made a few changes to the pattern, to begin with I didn't add the apron over the skirt as it made the dress look like a French maid costume and that was totally not the look I was going for. 

I also decided to pleat the skirt to better show off the embroidery designs

lastly decided not to use a zipper on the back, but to use huge chunky buttons instead

The real fun was choosing which of the awesome embroidery designs from Urban Threads to use, seriously there are so many fun designs over there it is hard to choose.  I decided that I would buy the Toile Noir  design pack which gave me some spooky yet beautiful designs to work with.

I did have one issue with the skull on, I am working with new embroidery software and I set the wrong size hoop , ooops!  There is still a little portion of the first attempt under the final version, I don't it shows too badly.

Finally, my favourite part of the costume, a tiny top hat!! This is a free standing lace from Urban Threads, isn't it cute?

I had so much fun making this costume, and by the look of it Miss Loofie she had fun wearing it.