These are some examples of clothing I have designed and made from scratch, like the blue and black watercolor blouse, or cloned from a piece I already had, such as the navy blue drapey shirt which I copied into the yellow and purple shirt you see me wearing. I also added roll tabs and buttons to the long sleeve blouse.
These were some of my favorite costumes to make, especially the St. Nicholas costume, because I was given a photograph, fabric, and told to make it happen. The St. Nicholas costume was used by a local megachurch for their Christmas production.
We had a bunch of old prom dresses sitting around and three of them happened to be shades of blue. So we decided I would refashion them into real-life Elsa costumes. Using other fabric and clothing we had around the store, I transformed all three into different versions of Queen Elsa’s Frozen dress. The last one ended up looking almost exactly like the Elsa dress worn in ABC’s Once Upon A Time.
Women’s and men’s dress pants can be easily refashioned into knickers for colonial, Victorian, or Steampunk costumes. Cut them off halfway between the knee and ankle, hem them and fold them up into a cuff. Then fold the cuff in on the sides and tack on a button. Voila! I added extra buttons to imitate a fall-front.
Often we get donated formal dresses that can’t be used for costumes from any particular era, but with a little refashioning we can use all or part of them for a costume, like how I removed the black vest top from the teal skirt. The skirt alone can be used for any Victorian costume. My favorite formal dress refashion though were the gorgeous dresses we got that had been stampled with “SAMPLE” on the back. The champagne colored one had a bodice full of soft asymmetrical folds, so I unpicked stitching around the zipper, reversed one of the folds to cover the lettering, and stitched it back down. I love it when a simple but clever fix saves a gorgeous piece like this one.
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