Are you ready for Halloween? I am a last minute costume Mom. When my older kids were tiny I would spend forever on costumes and start weeks in advance. Now my kids dig through the costume box the day before and I only make the little one a costume since the costume box is lacking in girl stuff.
E decided to be a fairy this year. Mostly because she really wanted the wings. The costume was way easy and I used leftover craft supplies that I already had in my craft stash. Tutu dresses are so easy to make and turn out SUPER pouffy which I think is fabulous.
I started out with about 100 yards of 6 inch tulle on rolls. I bought it at
http://papermart.com a few years ago. The yellow roll had about 60 yards left on it and the pink was maybe 20 and the orange around 40. Your tulle amount is going to depend on how long you make your dress and how pouffy you want it. E is 3 and her dress is 24 inches long. You are also going to want a little strip of elastic, a piece of ribbon for the neck tie and whatever embellishments you want to decorate your dress.
Measure around the child's chest where you want the top of the tutu dress and cut your elastic about an inch smaller than that. Then sew ends of elastic together so you have an elastic circle.
Cut your tulle the fast way by wrapping it around something so you just have to cut once. I used my 24 inch long quilting ruler.
Put your elastic around something so it's easier to attach the tulle. I used a binder. I like to double my tulle for maximum puffiness. So take two of the strips and fold them in half. Push them under the elastic.
Take the bottom ends and feed them over the elastic and through the little loop of tulle.
Pull down gently.
Gently tighten by pulling down and slide that loop over by the rest so they are smushed together. Repeat with the rest of the tulle.
Once you are happy with the amount of tulle on your elastic it's time to attach the ribbon for the neck tie/haltar. I cut a strip of ribbon about 3 feet long and just threaded it between two pieces of tulle.
Then tied it into a knot. Then when the dress is on your child you just put the ribbon over their shoulders and tie it to the elastic in the back. Or you could do a little halter and tie it behind their neck. The flowers on the front of the dress were super easy. They are just silk flowers from the craft store.
Cut the stems off and pull off the little green plastic thing that is usually on the back of silk flowers.
Snip the rest of the stem off right at the flower. Make sure to leave just a bit of the green and put a little dab of hot glue right there to hold the remaining stem to the back of the flower.
Then grab a alligator clip. I buy these at Sally's Beauty supply. They come in packs of 100 for around $5. Put a line on hot glue along the top.
Attach it to the back of the flower. Now you can attach to the flower to the front of the tutu dress and use for hair bows.
Ta-da! A fairy! The wings were from Target and the wand is just one of those little glow sticks from Walmart.
Love how pouffy it turned out.
Happy Halloween!
