Curtains to Costumes

EOP's office group usually has a theme for Halloween costumes every year, and this year's theme was The Princess Bride.  EOP was assigned his role, as the priest who performs the marriage ceremony of Prince Humperdink and Princess Buttercup.  You know, the "Mawaige" guy.

Mawaige is what bwings us togeva today.

Eric has had some challenging costumes before (he successfully created a joker costume out of a green fitted sheet one year), but this one seemed a little more daunting than his usual garb.  There is a lot of fabric in this costume and, unless you run across a cheap pope costume, it can get very expensive to create this look.  So. Much. Fabric.

Then I got an idea.  We had some curtains on our back window that did their job, but they weren't my favorite.  They are white, so they pick up every fingerprint and every visiting dog hair.  They were covering a sliding glass door, so they were always in the way.  And the first time I washed them, they shrunk, so they were too short.  For EG's birthday, I took them down so that they would be out of the way of traffic going out onto the back deck.  I washed them, and, well, I never put them back up.  I just couldn't do it.  So here I had 4 40x84-ish inch panels of heavy white fabric that was already hemmed.  That was a good start.

 



I started by taking one panel and folding it in half lengthwise and sewing up the side.  Then I figured out how long it needed to be to go from his neck to the floor, and I cut out a neck hole at the top of that section with pinking shears (oh how I love my new pinking shears).  This made the panel short in the back, but this was the base layer, so it wouldn't show.

While I was working on this, I was planning out the top layer of the costume (and watching the movie, of course, because - why not?).  I knew there was some sort of tapestry fabric in our house, but I couldn't for the life of me remember where it was.  Then it hit me!  We were given 3 bed skirts for a full size bed, when we purchased the bed from our friends.  All of them are nice quality, but we only use one of them.  This red tapestry bed skirt was just sitting in storage, waiting for a purpose.  This was a perfect start to the cape layer of the costume!

 

 

I left a short side intact and I seam ripped the other 3 sides to remove the tapestry fabric.  I then, added a 3 inch strip of the tapestry to each of these sides.  To make this into a cape, I sewed a square of fabric to the front, connecting the two sides of the section I left intact.

 

The hat was a bit of a challenge.  I kept putting it off, hoping it would magically make itself.  When that didn't happen, I started by cutting out a template out of poster board.

 

 

Once I knew this was the right size for hubby's head, I cut 2 out of the curtain fabric, making sure to use the already hemmed edge to my advantage, and sewed them around the curved sides.

 

 

The whole shape of this hat made me very uneasy.  Until I added the embellishments, it was too creepily similar to a Ku Klux Klan accessory for my liking. 



 

There were only 2 purchases made for this project.  One was gold trim.  Christmas at Halloween time was very helpful for finding a gold ribbon that would work for this. 

 

30 feet should be enough, right?

Then I just started adding ribbon accents to the costume.

 

On the hat to give it a more priestly look:

 

I used the curtain tie backs to make the tails on the back of the hat.

Around the neck hole of the base layer:

 

All over the cape layer:

 

Then I added the second purchase for this project, an iron-on gold cross, to the front of the hat.  I used the poster board template inside the hat to make it stand up correctly.

 

 

Here is the final look, in full make-up too.  EOP grew out his side burns and painted them silver and added some eyebrow pencil to his eyebrows to make them look a little bushier.

 

 

 

Not bad, eh?  All this for less than $4!  He got a lot of compliments at work too.  Everyone thought he was the pope, except when he was with the whole team.  We went in to see the rest of the team and they were all fabulous.

 

I had several people ask me what my costume was going to be.  Who had time???  I ended up dressing as a hockey fan, mostly because the hockey jersey was warm, and it was cold outside.  Also there just happened to be a game that night, so I just looked like I was in the know.  I guess I should have dressed up as Maria Von Trapp since I was making clothes out of curtains, all the while singing "these are a few of my favorite things!"