Rising New Moon Studios

I made a lot of costumes before I started this blog, so I really have nothing about the processes I went through other than a few pictures I took.  So I've decided that I'd like to revisit some of my pre-blog works and talk a little more in depth about them...  And I wanted to start with Sally the Ragdoll because I was really pleased with how this one turned out.   When I approached this costume, I knew immediately that I DIDN'T want to do this. It's the Sally Sack Dress!!!  If you've ever seen the movie, you'd know that Sally has curves.   See?  There's a waist and hips and even boobs.  The costume above doesn't flatter at all.  And even when I've seen other Sallys?... Sallies?...  Salllai?... that were hand made, a lot of girls make a straight shift or a straight a-line dress and those don't really flatter their bodies, either. So... first I needed to find a flattering dress pattern BAM!  Simplicity 51...

The Nightmare Before Christmas Sally the Ragdoll   Created March 2011   Items Made: Dress The silhouette of the dress is simple... just an a-line dress with flounce sleeves.  Most Sally costumes are straight a-lines which neglect her curvy figure so I chose a pattern with princess seams to not do that. What's really cool about this dress is that it was made entirely from scraps and remnants I had in my fabric stash. The rest of the dress was tricky.  I spent about 2 hours playing with fabrics on the mannequin to get the placements of each fabric to look good with each of the surrounding fabrics. Then each panel of the dress had to be assembled from the designated fabrics... Finally the panels were sewn together like normal.... it was kind of like making a quilt.  Although the chunk of Dark Blue/Light Blue stripe was really hard because it was two different fabrics that had to be pieced together and it wrapped around several of the panels....

    T he Nightmare Before Christmas Jack Skellington Created October 2009   Items Made: Jacket, Trousers, Tie. A LOT went into the costume.  It was one that I've wanted to make forever but I could never find a fabric that I thought suitable... and I really didn't want to hand paint all of those pinstripes onto every piece of fabric.   Luckily I came across this awesome uneven pinstripe in Dark Charcoal from an online fabric store.  It was on clearance and I bought all they had... 11 yards. The base of the pattern came from a Burda pattern for a women's suit/tuxedo.  It took a lot of altering to change the shape from a normal woman's figure to a man trying to emulate that of a disproportionate skeleton puppet.  I also had to change the collar from a shawl collar to notched collar.  Also the tails took a bit of work to make look tattered but tailored all at the same time.  The tie uses stiff felt for the wings and t...