This year, I chose to theme costume for me and my dog Toby. After getting approval from my parents whom Toby lives with, we decided to do a Carmen Miranda and mariachi band member.
So for Toby, I didn’t want to do anything too heavy. Halloween is on a Wednesday so it is possible that he is going to daycare to play with his little doggie buddies. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to overheat from his costume if my dad lets him wear it to daycare. So I decided to go with leg warmer sleeves with ruffles, a poncho cape, sombrero. Toby probably wants to beat me with the sombrero because he absolutely hates hats. His leg warmers were made out of cream satin. I was watching “Another Thin Man” movie (William Powell and Myrna Loy), I noticed the Cuban dancers with ruffles all over. That gave me the idea of double ruffles on the bottom of the leg warmers.
Wheels in my head started turning when I had leftover linen from my two 1960s dresses that I am still working on. So that was used as the ruffle trim on the skirt. It was probably too busy to do both the skirt and ruffles from. I am pretty short so a full length ruffled skirt would have definitely overwhelmed me. I made the skirt with an elastic waistband this is after all a costume so there was no need to make it too complicated. That fruity turban took a lot of thought and consideration. I just was not certain of the best way of achieving it.
I even posted on Pattern Review website to get ideas from more experienced seamstresses.
Alright, it doesn’t look like I will get the Carmen Miranda costume completed. I lost motivation when I didn’t have anywhere to really wear it to. I don’t really get trick-or-treater either so finishing a costume that only one trick-or-treater sees doesn’t really make sense. I have all the materials at home for whenever I decide to actually finish it. I have 1/2 the skirt finished just needing a ruffle. So it may get done after a couple other dresses.
