Halloween Flower

Since Katie is the only one who has told me what she wanted to be for Halloween, Katie is going to be the only one getting a costume made special by me. Here were have the half done top of her costume, a pink satin flower that is going to be attached to a green sweatsuit as a hood. This year, the costume satin (or satan as I like to call it since it likes to fray if you even just look at it) hasn't given me as much of a hard time as it did last year when I did a full princess costume. The hardest part of this whole thing has actually been finding a green sweatsuit.

Each of the petals is a sandwich of 3 fabrics: satin for the front, pink flannel for the back and brown fleece to give it bulk. Your fabric sandwich has to be your front and back right sides together with your fleece on top of that and you leave an opening to turn it right side out. The brown fleece is a leftover from a monkey costume I did last year for Ryan. My plan had been to make PJs after the monkeying had been done. However, as a clothing fabric, the brown fleece is cheap and awful and will tear at the slightest provocation. But as a quilt batting, it's pretty good! It's thin, lightweight and pretty easy to sew through when you have a few layers. Then you turn them inside out. I was going to trim the seams but when I turned it just to see what it was going to look like, it puffed out so nicely that I didn't.

Each of the leaves were done the same as a sandwich of green cotton, brown fleece and a layer of irridescent gossamery stuff. I trimmed those with pinking shears for a leafier effect. More later when I get it finished.