UPDATE: All of the Wizard of Oz DIY Costumes are done and can be viewed by clicking the link!! Enjoy!
And if you’re looking for other ideas, you can find all sorts of DIY Halloween Costume Ideas HERE.
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Oh my.
I have been so excited to share the next costume in the Wizard of Oz costume theme that my kiddos picked for this year! And holy smokes, was this one FUN! Well, I always worry if it will look right, hang right, fit right…..but after that passes, I get such a kick out of seeing it complete! I kept wondering if my vision was going to translate well, and let me tell you, when Elli finally put the dress over her head and let the frills fall all around her….WOW. I wasn’t sure if I should laugh because she looked like a cake top or cry some hallelujah-I’m-finally-done tears, now that it was complete. (Or maybe heave a big sigh of relief that I can finally get rid of all the glitter that has fallen all over my floors during the cutting/fitting/sewing stage. Darn glitter.)
But yes, Glinda is done. And she’s fluffy, and pink, and over-the-top sparkly. Just how this costume should be! :)
Elli has been so giggly and bouncy the past few days…….THRILLED that her costume is finally done. When she puts the dress on, she holds those little shoulders up so high and floats across the floor in all those layers of sparkle, like she is a legit little slice of royalty. (Shhh…..don’t tell her otherwise!)
And of course, the reenactment of the Wizard of Oz comes right out of her! And she waves her wand and talks to the little munchkins, telling them to come out from behind the bushes and houses.
And as the spokesperson for the little munchkins, she asks that strange Dorothy girl, “are you a good witch, or a bad witch?!!”
Sweet Elli, she knows that it’s very important to have Dorothy find that Yellow Brick Road, and to be on her way. Oh, and something about never taking those ruby slippers off too.
She also knows that Glinda is not Glinda, without a really sparkly wand. So, I made her a nice and tall one (just like the real Glinda) and decked that thing out with some pretty huge BLING!
And that crown. It’s actually a piece of thick foam, spray painted in metallic paint. And of course, covered in more of those gaudy jewels. But Elli? She loved every last one!
The bottom of the dress is full of satin gathers……but then another 5 yards of gathered sparkly tulle on top.
And in case you didn’t notice last week, there is a structured Hoop Skirt underneath all of that fabric, holding up the skirts of the dress and giving it some serious fullness!
Oh, and per Elli’s request, I kept adding on more and more of those little jewels. She has no clue they aren’t real and thinks there are the most fancy thing on the whole dress. (But they are in fact, the cheapest item on it. Ha!)
The back of the dress? A zipper. An easy on and off that the kiddos can help each other maneuver while playing dress-up. And those sleeves? Not quite as large as the real Glinda……but they are certainly HUGE!
In case you’re worried about the fullness of the dress slowing Elli down, don’t you worry for a second. She grabs those hoops, lifts them up……..and runs!
Oh this girl, she has been super-charged-happy for days. And has heard me tell her at least 20 times that I would have LOVED to have this exact dress when I was her age. (I’m still trying to think of reasons to make myself a hoop skirt. Anyone have an excuse for me??)
Such a fun character, that Glinda. And Elli sure plays her well, especially now that she has the dress and accessories to properly act the part. :)
Want to make Glinda too? (Or even slightly adjust it to be any type of little princess?)
Okay, let’s gather up a few things first…
Supplies:
***Keep in mind, the above amounts are what I used to make this costume for my almost 8 year old. Your amounts may vary.
Let’s begin by taking a peek at this Cinderella Dress tutorial and this Baby Blessing Dress tutorial. Both tutorials show how to use an existing dress to create a new dress.
This Glinda dress will be made almost exactly the same as the Cinderella dress…..but with some long sleeves added to the poofy sleeve portion, similar to the Rapunzel dress tutorial. But we’ll get to the sleeves in a minute.
First, cut out your bodice pieces, 2 front pieces, and 4 back pieces.
Now, because I wanted all of the dress to be covered in the same sparkly tulle, I cut around 1 of my front pieces and 2 of the back pieces (because the other bodice pieces are for the lining) in the tulle. (If you find the fabric you need that is plenty sparkly, skip this step. I just wanted the sparkles to cover the whole dress.)
Then I stitched the tulle pieces to the right side of the bodice pieces, using a basting stitch (or a really long stitch length) all the way around each piece, 3/8 inch from the edge.
****Before you start sewing, keep in mind that if you attached tulle to your fabric pieces like I did, you need to finish off all of your inner seams with a zig-zag stitch and really trim off your excess edges, so they don’t itch your subject while wearing the dress. (In fact, after you sew your initial seam, you may want to trim your edges first and then zig-zag them and kinda sew off the edge of the fabric, which will encapsulate the raw edges inside of the zig-zag stitch.)
Next, put your outer bodice pieces together at the shoulders and your lining bodice pieces together at the shoulders…..just like the Baby Blessing Dress tutorial I mentioned above. Then, sew the two bodice pieces together with right sides together, just like above, but only sew along the neckline. Snip along the neck line (to make turning easier and flatter), turn right side out, and then iron flat.
Now, it’s time to cut you sleeves, just like instructed in the linked tutorials above. However, you won’t need the strip of fabric at the bottom of each sleeve to keep the puffy gathers in place. You’ll be attaching it straight to the straight bottom half of the sleeve. So cut two puffy upper section pieces of the sleeve and two lower straight section pieces. (Refer to Rapunzel for these pieces.) Now, cut out pieces of tulle to cover and attach to each of these pieces, just like you did above.
I forgot to add the tulle to the two upper sleeve pieces (in the picture above), so here they are…..covered.
Next, we are going to be making the extra poofy portion to each sleeve. Now, there are probably several other great ways to do this…….but this is just what I did. So if you find this needs some tweaking, go for it.
What I did was cut 2 pieces of tulle (so it would be double layered), in a rectangle shape. I made it about 2 inches narrower (so an inch free on both ends) than the width of one of the rounded sleeve pieces. The double layer rectangles are 24 inches long…..but your length may vary, depending on the size you’re making. Cut the top portion of the rectangles, so that they match the curve of your sleeve piece.
Now, you’re gong to sew a basting stitch (for gathering) along the top edge of the sleeve, but also include the 2 layers of the rectangle pieces.
Flip that up and sew (with a basting stitch for gathering) the bottom of the 2 rectangles to the bottom of the sleeve piece.
Now, you should have a sleeve piece that has this long piece of tulle attached at both the top and bottom.
Now, attach the sleeve to the bodice. (In the Cinderella tutorial linked above, the bodice was already sewn together and then the sleeves were attached. But I actually now prefer attaching sleeves to an open bodice and then sewing the entire thing together…..more like this Play Dress tutorial.) Sew in place, then zig-zag to finish the edges, and then trim the extra fabric from the edges.
Then, turn the dress right side up on your sewing machine and try and get the tulle out of the way as much as possible for this next step. What you want to do is open up the tulle along the upper portion of the sleeve and sew it upwards onto the bodice just a bit, to help the tulle stand up more on the shoulder. You’re wanting to pull it away from the gathers of the actual sleeve material and sew a stitch right next to where it’s attached to the dress, but slightly up onto the bodice.
Here’s a better up close view (even though it’s rotated from how I sewed it up above). The layers of tulle are sewn upwards over to the right….and the sleeve portion is still over to the left.
And here it is zoomed out a bit, so you can see the puff of the tulle.
Now, gather up the bottom portion of the sleeve (keep the extra tulle out of the way), and attach it to the straight portion of the sleeve (that you cut up above) and pin them together. You would attach this bottom portion of the sleeve, just like you attached the band piece in the other tutorials above.
Sew, then zig-zag the raw edges, and then trim off the excess. Turn your fabric right side up and it should like similar to this. Now, sew your sleeve closed (just like the Play Dress tutorial) and finish off the raw edges. Repeat with the other sleeve.
You should now have a bodice similar to this, with two funky shoulder pieces. Don’t worry, we’ll fix those later!
Also, be sure to add your zipper, just like the linked tutorials above.
Now, the fluffy skirt portion of the dress. Follow the tutorials up above for adding your skirt section to the dress…..but here’s what I did to get the two layers. Because I didn’t want the tulle to become one piece with the satin fabric……I attached them separately. This way, the tulle sticks out and bit more and it adds more fluff to the dress. (Just be sure that you try the hoop skirt on your subject and then measure how long you want your dress to be.) I cut my tulle 180 inches (5 yards) long for the skirt section, which is about 8 times the width of my daughter’s waist. It’s a lot of tulle…..but worth it. And isn’t too bulky around the waist at all, because it gathers in so tiny.
If you flip the tulle down, here’s what it looks like. But we’re adding another layer here.
Cut your piece of fabric from your base fabric and attach it to the skirt the same way. This skirt portion was about 108 inches wide, which is about 5 times my daughter’s waist. It doesn’t matter how much fabric you use, just be sure that it’s big enough to fit around your hoop skirt, with a little extra, so it’s not tight around it.
(Be sure to trim and zig-zag these raw edges.)
Now flip the skirt portion down, and it should look like this.
Now, onto fixing those sleeves.
You should have two layers of tulle. Separate them and kind of scrunch the inner layer so it will act as the filling to your sleeve.
Then grab the top layer of the sleeve and find the very edge.
Start sewing a very long stitch along the very edge of this tulle, using a needle and thread.
Once you make it all the way from one end to the other (of this edge of tulle), start pulling on your thread, so that it starts gathering in the tulle.
Pull the string tight so that the tulle is completely pulled in, creating a poof to the sleeve. Tie it and knot the gather nice and tight and sew it to the base of the sleeve too with a few stitches, so it will stay in place. Repeat with the back side of the sleeve. And then repeat with the other sleeve.
Onto the jewels. If your jewels have little holes to sew them to the dress, do that. Mine didn’t, so I used epoxy glue and attached them to the dress. I added jewels to the top, around the waist, and around the wrists of the dress.
Onto the crown. For the crown, I basically turned a rectangle piece of foam sideways, wrapped it around my daughter’s head, added some elastic to the back……and used that as the crown. However, the top of Glinda’s crown has these weird star shapes at each of the points. So I created the shape out of paper first and then traced them along the top of my foam piece.
Then, I attached each of the stars with a scoop…
….and then cut away the excess.
Then I spray painted the foam silver (on the front and back) and then glued some jewels down.
After that dried, I added a piece of elastic to one end of the foam, down at the bottom (and on the back side). Once that dried, I added glued the other end of the elastic to the other side of the crown. Clothes pins work really well to hold the elastic in place while it’s drying.
For the wand, I cut two stars out of sparkly foam (that were exactly the same size, so they’d fit together perfectly) then added jewels to them both with epoxy glue.
Then I spray painted a long wooden dowel silver. Once it dried, I attached one end of the dowel to the wrong side of one of the stars.
Then I placed the other star on top, glued it in place, and then used clothes pins to hold it in place until it dried.
And that, my friends, is it! Wow, I know…..that’s a long one. But so very worth it!
Hope you enjoy your Glinda as much as my daughter enjoys hers!
-Ashley