A day of Trial and Error

Every Halloween (all two of them :P), it's a battle to get my daughter into her costume. Actually thinking about it a bit, her first Halloween when she was just 1 month shy of 1, she willingly put on her costume (a ladybug). Last year though, I spent a month (yes you read that right) gradually getting her use to her costume to the point that on the day of her Halloween party with her little friends, she actually wore it and the head piece.

About a month ago I started thinking about Halloween and what she'd dress up as. The store I used the previous 2 years is no longer around and I really did not want to go through the hassle of getting her to like the costume. Soooo I did some thinking and thought "Why not dress her up as a Fairy Tale Character?" She be in 'regular' clothes, not a costume, so **hopefully** she would put it on willingly.

I'm not sure how I came about choosing Little Red Riding Hood, I think it was along the lines of "she likes dresses, I doubt she'd mind a little apron added to it and I know she loves hoods, so the cloak/cape would be something I think she'll love".

This line of thought had me at first looking at the costumes available. Ever Google "Little Red Riding Hood costume"? Yeah, not the best results. So I did a quick search on Etsy and after looking at prices, I decided to make my own. This is where someone should have knocked some sense into me. :P

So I did some more searching, found a cute peasant dress and over-skirt pattern on etsy and found a LRRH costume that I wanted to use as inspiration. Should be easy enough right? Well, while the dress the seller posted in her store was super cute, her instructions on how to make said dress were confusing and complicated. I spent the whole afternoon today doing a 'mock up' dress. The first attempt was an abysmal failure.

Using her 'measurements' for my 3 yr old, the dress was way too short and way too narrow, plus her instruction for assembly left a lot to be desired. After a couple of hours of frustration and tearing out seams, I decided to start from scratch. This time however, I took one of N's pillowcase dresses, measured the width and length, re-cut my scrap fabric, and started assembly. From my trial and error earlier, I figured out how things were suppose to go. The one adjustment I made, was making the sleeves longer instead of short, since she'll be wearing it in October when it's going to be chilly.

Anyway, my mom, friends and others have said a pattern is just one big puzzle. In this case, the pattern itself was a puzzle that you start to put together and then realize you are missing important pieces.

The end result however, is that I completed my mock up dress tonight. I'm quite happy with it minus the fact that it's about 2" too short. :0( Unlike her pillowcase dress, this one has sleeves and the neckline is elastic, so that, and my seam allowance (which I accounted for) had me lose some in the length. This however, is an easy fix, I just made note to add an extra 5" to the length and then I can just cut off the extra after trying it on my daughter.

Next will be deciphering the Over-skirt pattern, which I bought from the same seller.