As several of you guessed, this year I was Ms Frizzle from The Magic Schoolbus for Halloween.  If you (sadly) aren't familiar with the PBS show and the tv show, here's the theme song and intro: Ms Frizzle's dress always matched the curriculum for that installment, so I've got a belt and sleeve trim made of streptococci bacteria that are being consumed by white blood cells.  There are red blood cells all over the dress, but some of them are ruptured and are spilling out the malaria … [Read more...]

This is the last in-progress Monday update for my Ms. Frizzle costume you'll get.  I've got to have the whole thing finished by this Saturday.  So, I spent most of Saturday drawing germs, tracing them onto interfacing, ironing the interfacing onto fabric, and then pinning and topstitching the appliques onto the dress. In case that was a little in the weeds, I'm drawing designs onto this kind of fabric: The interfacing gets ironed onto the pretty fabric to make it stronger and to … [Read more...]

Oh dear. The dryad costume is not going well.  My inability to hand draft a corset meant I had to turn to a commercial pattern.  While I waited for it to arrive, I started working on the big branchy mask, only to find that I'd ordered the wrong gauge of wire, and this stuff was too weak to help my hair stand on end (even though this is the style my hair is normally most cooperative with!). So now I've got all my materials finally lined up, but very little accomplished.  It happens to be … [Read more...]