I used my sewing machine (finally)!!!

I'd been wondering if the idea I had for K's Halloween costume was still going to fit her so on Friday I decided to pull it out of the storage bin and try it on her. It's a size 2 so I was a little concerned but after some struggling (and her screaming "tight" at me) I managed to get it on her. The top is stretchy Lycra material but the arms and skirt don't have any give at all so we have to work a little harder to get her arms up into the sleeves. However, there were a few modifications I wanted to make to it first.

The base of the costume is a super cute red and black Flamenco dress my parents brought back from Spain. Since K is obsessed with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse I thought I could use the dress as a Minnie Mouse costume. The first thing I needed to change on it to accomplish this goal was the fringe.

This is how it looked originally with the fringe (and a sippy cup)

I'm not much of a fringe person (at all) so originally I thought I'd just cut it off and that would be that. Unfortunately "that" is never quite "that". After cutting off the fringe some of the top part that was still attached wasn't all straight and it was starting to unravel a bit. All in all, it looked kinda crappy so I had to come up with a way to fix it. Plus where the fringe met in a V at the middle on the front and back wasn't perfect so I wanted some kind of Minnie Mouse cameo pin to put right at that point to kind of cover it up and make the costume more fancy and more "Minnie". I went to Jo-Ann Fabrics looking for some red with black polka dot ribbon - no luck, only red with white polka dots or pink with black polka dots.Then we went to Michaels, still no luck on the ribbon I wanted. While I could have checked Hancock Fabrics, it's a bit farther away and I was being impatient. So I decided to look into other options for the ribbon. I thought about plain red but I couldn't find one that was a perfect match. I thought about plain black but with the shininess of the Lycra, a plain ribbon didn't look quite right either. I ended up with black velvet and I think it looks really great.

(Please ignore the pile of mail under the dress. The left side is finished with the black velvet ribbon and the right side is how it looked with just the fringe cut off.)

Also, I couldn't find any Minnie Mouse cameo pins so I looked at buttons, jewelry and finally ended up with these awesome Disney embroidered stickers.

Totally cool.

 Finally, after having to rip out my first attempt because I sewed the ribbon on with a stitch right down the middle that didn't hold it down enough to cover up the raw part of the remaining fringe, I figured it out. I had to make two lines of stitches, one at the top of the ribbon and one at the bottom so the velvet would stay flat and keep all of the yucky parts covered. I added the large red Mickey head sticker right at the tip of the V on the front and the large black Mickey head sticker at the tip of the V on the back.

Tee Da! (I moved the mail so it looks a lot nicer.)

Being a long time Disney fan myself, I already had a very nice pair of furry Mickey ears that I've had for years. I bought a roll of wired red with white polka dot ribbon and made a big bow and sewed that onto the ears. Here's a before shot:

Doing her best pirate face.

All in all I think it turned out very cute and the best compliment I got was from the Hubbs saying he wished it was bigger so she could wear it longer. :) I'll post a complete shot of the whole costume when she wears it on Halloween.