On patterns and things and other stuff

I had this brilliant idea that I was going to sew my Halloween costume this year. I have long been obsessed with the awesomeness of costuming but my dislike and frustrations over sewing have turned me off to actually becoming a costumer. However, my desire to have truly awesome costumes has brought me to the realization that I am going to learn how to sew one way or the other.

I have done some sewing in the past. I actually made the vest my husband wore for our wedding. Mostly though it has been a "close your eyes and go" situation.

So, I took myself down to our local fabric megamart to look at patterns. And I quickly decided that I was in over my head (and my budget this month). I am proud of myself in that I finally decided to start small and bought a pattern to make an apron instead. It was a significantly better idea then spending money on a project I couldn't really afford that had a high likelihood of failure. I guess I will try the one step at a time approach.

This does mean that I am now clueless as to what I am going to do for Halloween this year. I think I will try to hit some thrift stores this week.

I have also been thinking long and hard about learning to make hats. I love hats and I am starting to realize a passion for crazy wild hats. They are expensive though and part of me has been wondering if it would be more affordable to make them myself. My one fear is that I am not really much of a designer so I don't know where I would come up with ideas but I thought I wouldn't worry about that so much just yet. For now I am going to work on assembling the skills. YouTube user "Threadbanger" has some interesting how-to videos and some of them involve hat making.

In my quest for acquiring costuming skills, I have been paging through pattern books. Particularly costuming because that is really the kind of sewing I want to be doing. Here is the thing I don't understand about the costume world. I have seen in Halloween stores the costumes with the slutty-I mean "vamped" up versions of a theme. The sexy nurse, the sexy cartoon princess, etc where the hemline falls just below the butt cheek and the neckline falls in the middle of the cleavage. But you can also get patterns to make these.

For me costuming is about the escape and the better the costume the better the escape. I suppose I can see the appeal of sexy costume role-play but really good costumers can make some truly sexy pieces without having to cheapen it. Oh well, I guess I shouldn't judge. To each their own. Off for a walk and probably some playing with string later.