Upon review, I really do go overboard...

Yes, I'm talking about it again: Halloween costumes!  I don't think it's unreasonable though.  I have at least three to make, one of which is fairly elaborate (Chaela's) and there are just over three months left until they need to be finished.  Oh, and I'm attempting to draft my own patterns, so... yeah.

In the spirit of things, I decided I want to compile a pictorial history of costumes I've made for my kids, so here they are!

2008

Chaela - Medieval Princess

2009

Chaela - Fairy

2010

Chaela - Witch

Joci - Black Cat

2011 - Pirates

Chaela

Joci

2012 - Disney Princesses

Chaela - Rapunzel

Joci - Merida

Kairi - ? (currently planning on Snow White)

The reason I'm so pumped today is because I went to the store and got Chaela and Joci's fabric!  I was going to have Joci be Cinderella up until this morning.  She kept pointing at the picture of Merida (when she could be bothered to point at all) and even though she technically wanted the other dress, I'm not doing wigs (any wig I can afford would be totally tacky).  So in the picture above, the blue and gold fabrics are Joci's and the pinks and purples are for Chaela.  It was an extremely frustrating process trying to find the right fabrics in the right colors for the Rapunzel dress, and in the end I had to sacrifice either the correct color or texture in the majority of the things I bought for her.

Here are some thoughts about the costumes before I start:  Chaela's chosen dress is complex; it has five different fabrics, four to five different trims, and embroidery... I'm not doing the embroidery and I only got four kinds of fabric, one can do double duty.  It's also not really a dress, it's a skirt and top plus a petticoat.  Yeah.

Joci's dress is really basic compared to Chaela's, all it has is a band of gold brocade at the bottom and gold trim around the neck.  I'm a little worried about the head thing (wimple?) but if all else fails I'll just get some ladies' opaque white tights and cut out a hole for her face, ha ha.

I'm leaning towards Snow White for Kairi, and since she's so little I think I may do a yellow tutu instead of a skirt.  I'm doing hers last, though, since she has the most growing to do between now and October.  I like the tutu in this picture, but I'd like the top to be closer to what Snow White wears in the movie.

On top of all this madness, if I have time I'd like to do a cloak for each of them because heck, if I'm doing all this work I'll be darned if the costumes I make are going to be covered in winter coats!  We'll see though, that  could easily be too stressful and/or expensive.