Tis the season, after all.
Around this time last year I started puttering gently, barely consciously, toward a mental image—-a romantic, layered, quasi-Victorian-undress look executed in all black. I made my black corset, and then a black petticoat. In between, I also started a black shift, from the same Simplicity 2890 as the corset. Alas, the very first seam I went to sew on the shift, I sewed the yoke piece on upside down. I folded everything up, tucked it in a plastic zip-lock bag, and didn’t look at it again for, well, another year.
But at our Victorian Sewing Circle in September, I finally pulled it out and unpicked the seam, and the damn thing finally started to come together. It’s got a very lovely, shapely yoke, once you finally get the right edges sewed together.
I leaned into the hand-finishing techniques for this piece, if only because the slightly loose-woven fabric has a lovely textured feel to it. I hand-stitched down the underarm facings, and the inner face of the yoke as well. I hand rolled the sleeve hems, and hand-felled the side seams, and hand-stitched a wide bottom hem. I wanted to add lace to the yoke, but had trouble finding one that would follow the elegant curves. Maybe I should just try embroidery.
I find it pretty odd how differently I feel about different hand-stitching processes. Rolling the little hems on the sleeves made me want to kill myself. Hand-felling the (much longer) side seams and bottom hem felt more like an exercise in meditation. And it’s practically the same stitch? Similarly, I can hand-sew the binding of a quilt without a blink, but sewing the binding on a corset fees like torture.
This chemise pattern is geared towards 1860s, and it’s a very off-the-shoulder style. Which I knew, having read several reviews, but still didn’t adjust for. Silly past Tanit. So it’s, um, WAY off the shoulders. I think I may go in and take 4” or so out of the back so it will sit a little better.
I added a button a little higher up than maybe designed for, in the hopes of keeping it SLIGHTLY in place. (I may go back and change the button, though, this one is glass but it just looks white which wasn’t what I wanted. Now I just need to find my black corset, which has been mysteriously AWOL for several months, so I can model it properly. Though I suppose this too-small costume one will work in a pinch
But no whimsical Hallowe’en ensemble would be complete without…
A cloak.
And not just any cloak. This is Simplicity 5794, the pattern Rachel Maksy used in her cloak video, ages ago. It also had pretty good reviews on Patternreview.com.
I’m honestly not sure when or where I acquired this pattern. I am quite sure I didn’t purchase it. But it looks like good solid fun.
It is, um, a little quirky.
The first glitch came with the cutting layout, where the pattern instructions show it being cut out on the lengthwise fold. These gigantic pattern pieces are not being cut on the fold for any normal-width (by which I mean 60”) fabric. Incidentally, the best idea wound up being to fold my (non-directional, thankfully) fabric in half crosswise, and arrange the two main cloak pieces going in opposite directions, then cut the hood from the remnants. I wound up with around a metre extra for the outer fabric, and the merest scraps of my purple lining.
There are three views, each with its own hood. One has a square back forming a small point, one an exaggerated point with a tassel, and the third is… unlike any hood pattern I have ever seen. It’s shaped more like the petal of a flower. I can only imagine it is meant to create a wide, fluttering kind of hood. I might even try it out sometime. Just not for this one.
I wasn’t super into the square back hood of View A, but I figured I would just round off the little point into a smooth curve and all would be fine. Which it is, but really I should just have pulled out the hood for McCall’s M6800, because that is my favourite hood of all time, and this one ended up being just a little bit short of it. They’re very similar, with a pleat to tuck the extra fullness into the neckline, but the Simplicity hood is just a little less voluminous. It’s fine, just not quite as extra. Which is odd considering this is a costume pattern and McCall’s 6800 is an everyday kind of coat pattern. I do love the body the combination of coating and Kasha lining has.
Oh and I noticed as I was putting away the pattern pieces that the hood I used (view A, again) was actually supposed to be cut on the bias. Weird, but again I can’t help wondering exactly what difference that would’ve made. Something to try in the future, perhaps.
There isn’t much to say about the rest of the cloak construction—it’s a lot of long, straight seams. The shoulders are a wee bit wide but then I was cutting the XL size since it was already cut out and I always hate to lose the larger sizes but also there’s no way I was tracing out those giant pattern pieces. I figured I would narrow them if I felt it was a problem (which wouldn’t be hard) but honestly if I wasn’t looking for the problem I don’t think I would have noticed.
The length is GENEROUS. The envelope pictures show a cloak trailing artistically on the ground and they are not wrong. I’m more likely to be adding at least 2” in length to stuff, and it still trails on the ground on me; I’m wearing 2” heels in these photos and took a roughly 3” hem and it still brushes the ground.
I decided to use some purple bias binding from stash to cover the edge of the hem, since what else am I going to use it for? It’s a lot brighter than the lining, though. I tugged on the binding and eased the wool underneath as I sewed it on by machine, so it gathers my curved hem in nicely (maybe a little too much? My tension wasn’t terribly even, either). Then I took a deep breath and hand-stitched a good 4m of hem. Ouch! I machine stitched the lining about 1/2” shorter than the outer hem, and if I am a good girl I will make some little thread chains to connect the two at the seams, but I haven’t done it yet. I didn’t even look at the pattern instructions for hemming; I opted for separate lining hems as this is what I use in coats with wide, flowing hems and I think it lets the fabrics move the best.
After much waffling, I decided to close it with a button and buttonhole; I didn’t want to do the ties the pattern calls for. I would’ve loved a metal sew-on clasp but didn’t have one on hand, and some kind of tab and button seemed a bit overworked.
I’m more used to sewing coats than cloaks (I say as I haven’t sewn a fullblown coat in at least five or six years) so some parts of the construction felt weird, like the lack of interfacing and facings. I’m glad this pattern didn’t have facings, as it’s a huge fabric hog already, but it still felt weird to be understitching the lining right at the edge of the cloak. Yes, it will peek out. Yes, that’s ok.
It’s not a very full cloak, actually, despite being a massive fabric hog It’s a half-circle, actually. I don’t even want to think about how much fabric a full circle this size would take). You can’t put your hands on your hips without it gaping open. However, it does hang nicely closed with arms at sides. And looks best thrown back over the shoulders anyway, I discovered.
And now that it’s done it might be making me the happiest I’ve been in a very long time.
The black corset showed up at the last possible second, after I had turned most of the house upside down looking for it, in a place I had checked several times before. So here’s a quick peek at the final look, or something like it:
Still need to decide if I want to add witchy hat or vampire fangs.
And also figure out how to be so extra I can wear this cape in everyday life.
It’s a good sign when you feel the need to repeat a pattern right away, right?
This year, they’re largely doing their own thing (a tulle-skirted gown got butchered in my sewing room while I was absent, but I’m maintaining plausible deniability and not asking) so I’ve been free to sew my own. And of course this fabric was always meant to be a classic fit ‘n flare dress, so why not repeat my success with the Betty Dress? Especially when 
There’s not much to say about the construction, except that I added a “sash”—attached to the front bodice at side and waist seams, with ties inserted I to the side seam so they can wrap around the back and make a bow in the front.
Last time I did this was the Star Wars dress, but I didn’t do the front under-sash piece, and I think I like the extra solidity it gives.
In this case, the two seams I really wanted to match were the CF skirt seam, and the CB seam. There’s not supposed to be a seam on the centre front skirt, of course, and the pattern expects you to cut the skirt on the cross-grain to allow it to fit on 45″ wide fabric. That wasn’t a go with this strongly directional print, so seam it was.
After my careful cutting (one piece at a time, folding the seam allowance back on the first seam to align the second piece), I pressed the seam allowance under on one piece, lined it up, and marked on the second piece where the seam should go. I pinned my major match points, making sure the pin went through my marked lines both times, and then I sewed. I did not break out my walking foot, though I thought about it. This succeeded in making my horizontal match points reasonably aligned. I did have to take in or let out the seam minutely in a few places to get things lining up more perfectly—a mm makes a difference!—but on the whole I’m really pleased with where I ended up.
Especially across the back zipper. This is the trickiest part, since you have to align everything to points on the zipper, not to the other fabric directly. Again, I marked my seam-lines and marked match points with pins. Wash-away wonder tape would probably have been helpful, but I haven’t got any at the moment.
I set my zipper stitch long and first just basted it in, concentrating on getting the vertical locations to match without worrying too much about sewing too close to the teeth. (I DID worry about keeping the teeth aligned over my marked seam-line) Then, once I had things more or less aligned, I went back to stitch closer to the zipper teeth. Oh, and I remembered to stabilize the fabric along the zipper. I think this helped, too.
I made a couple of minute fitting tweaks to the pattern this second time—squaring the shoulder slightly and doing a very small swayback adjustment on the bodice back.
The black fabric for the sash is a lightweight cotton satin from Fabricland a few years ago, leftover from another project. It’s one of my favourite fabrics ever. I had pulled it out when auditioning fabrics for something else last week, but I’m so glad I didn’t pick it because it was perfect for this.
It’s certainly not my most outlandish or intricate Hallowe’en costume ever, but I was pretty happy with it—glad to get it made, but most especially proud of my construction. And my print matching. I might be crowing about that all month.
Tyo’s costume this year was both simpler and more frustrating than Syo’s. Simpler in that she had it picked out early, it required making a single piece, not three or four, and I bought a marked-down twill for it so no precious or sentimental fabric was sacrificed. Frustrating mainly because Tyo didn’t prioritize the making of it, so she kept making other plans and disappearing, and I was not prepared to sew it all for her, both because she’s old enough to do it herself and also hello, fitting. But mainly the first reason.
Anyway. Obviously plan B was in order. A further search turned up Burda 3038, above, which had all the required style elements—except that it’s a young junior size range. It goes up to a 37” hip, which is close, but, um, the drafting was definitely for a preadolescent body.
I raised the back rise a bit over an inch, doubled the size of the back darts, and added a bit of width to the hips. I should’ve added a bit more to the hips, but all in all it worked out surprisingly well. I’m not saying they fit “well” for pants, but, well, they fit!
The rise would be great as pants, but was not quite as high as I was hoping for for coveralls. But since we were on a project-runway style deadline, we made it work.
Since I couldn’t find the shirt pattern, we fell back to Kwik Sew 433. Tyo had made this before for an unblogged 
And, by some miracle, it all worked. I thought maybe I added too much length at the back, but then she sat down. Less in the front might have been possible, but I don’t think it’s a problem, really.
I tried to make Tyo do most of the work, but as the evening wore on and time grew short I wound up doing more of it. So she did the cutting out, and constructed the pants (including cargo pockets!) mostly on her own, but I did all the sewing for the top except the darts. Fortunately I noticed that the KS seam allowances for the jacket/top were only 1/4” BEFORE we sewed anything at 5/8”, which would’ve been both hilarious and painful. I did manage to insert the zipper inside out.
You may have noticed the cuffs at both sleeve and pants hems. This is because both are unfinished. And yet, sometimes that’s good enough. She can finish those for next year, when it gets reworked into a ghostbusters costume.
Repeat patterns help a lot for speeding up Hallowe’en sewing. For the coat, we settled on 
but now I won’t be. Since 2m is not enough fabric for this pattern, we had to continue stash diving to find something compatible. Settled on a nice, beefy bottom weight cotton stretch sateen. Not as precious as the flocked denim but still a nice basic I’d hoped to turn into something practical for ME. For lining, we used the last of my precious red Kasha, (what did I say about vampire wannabe-ism?) which would hopefully make the whole thing a little more Hallowe’en-friendly (Hallowe’en here is either on the cusp of winter or in full on winter so making costumes warm is a priority).
Syo did most of the cutting out and basically all of the sewing on the shell. I directed and sewed the lining and hems. And the main hem is the main thing that we probably should redo, because I hemmed the two layers together and I shouldn’t have, but we were on a tight time schedule. So it doesn’t hang as nicely as it should. I made the buttonholes but she selected and sewed on the buttons.
The skirt(s) and blouse were much simpler and quicker. I drafted the skirt as a high-low half-circle on some black stretch velvet. And by drafted I mean, took a measuring tape and some chalk and and drew lines right on the fabric. I made a bunch of ruffle with some still-kinda-precious-to-me stretch mesh, and added various gathered bits until it started to look ok. There’s an underskirt of red mesh made much the same way, too. It was harder to let Syo help with this part, since I was flying by the seat of my pants. But it also didn’t take too long.
The blouse was both last and least. The pattern is just a peasant blouse from the late 70s, not unlike the 
Guys, I love this costume. Like I wish it were for me grade of love. None of the snapshots really do it justice—it deserves a proper photo shoot. Someday. 😂
Tanit-Isis Sews 
