Halloween Extravaganza Day 5: Vampires and Detectives

Welcome back dear readers.... have you been inspired to make your Halloween Costume, are you finding a favorite among our creations, well..... we aren't finished yet, there are still more amazing creations to come!!!!  Don't forget to linkup you costumes to win a prize in our Halloween Extravaganza.

Today we travel back in time to visit one of the greatest detectives - Sam Spade, and one of the oldest movie villains - Dracula.

Let Andrea and Rebecca transport you to a different world....

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I'm back ....and as promised we are still sticking with my movie theme but have traveled back a few years to 1941.  Every now and then my husband-like creature takes on a 'fetish'of sorts.....no, not like that get your minds out the gutter, at the moment he is really into 1940's, film noir type movies. At first I was reluctant to join in (some of his hobbies are just tedious) but decided to give it a go. We watched Double Indemnity, Key Largo and the Maltese Falcon. 

Humphrey Bogart is an actor that I had always heard about but had never seen him in action and I really enjoyed the movies. He is a very suave character, that and the 1940's style just reminded me of my 2 year old. He is a boy that loves to accessories, vests, hats, ties you name it he loves to wear it it.  So I decided that we could combine my love of these old movies with his stylin ways and dress him as Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogarts character in The Maltese Falcon).

 I had seen the Peek-a-Boo 'Little Gentleman' range and toyed with buying it a few times but we never really had the occassion to wear such a dapper little outfit, so this gave me the perfect excuse.  The Little Gentleman jacket was far easier to put together than it looks....I will be making more,  and I just added a second row of buttons to give it that 40's look.

The vest again was super easy to construct and is fully reversible so I added a navy and white star print to the lining side so he can wear it as a casual piece with jeans.  Here is where I have to admit some cheating. Time just didnt allow for me to sew up the pants as well so he is wearing a pair that we already had but I do intend to make them so he has a lovely matching suit. I could have chosen to sew the Peek-a-boo Oxford shirt to complete the outfit, it truly is one of my favorite patterns but once again, time was agaisnt me. I found a great free tutorial to make his tie here http://www.sweetshopsewing.com/2014/04/16/free-mens-neck-tie-pattern-and-tutorial/ .

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We found some great vintage relics to decorate his desk and he had good fun plaing with them all as we did the photoshoot.  I'm not sure if he found his valuable bird statue but he looked pretty cute while he looked for it :)

Fall is my favorite time of the year......cooler weather....the changing of the leaves to such beautiful hues....hoodies and jeans....the smells of the crisp mornings....football.....and HALLOWEEN.... Oh how I love Halloween....the decorations...pumpkin carving.....fun and creative cooking projects....and countless hours of discussions with my littles about what they are going to be for Halloween!!! Growing up I didn't get my say so in my costume....usually I used what my sister had worn the year before....more times than not our costumes were handmade by my mom....which at the time I didn't really appreciate...but that was probably because I always seemed to end up being a clown....or Ragady Ann....oh how I longed to be something scary!

I have made it a point with my girls to let them decide what they want to be....and this year...I have to say that this year is my favorite to date and I think it may be hard to top in future years to come!!! So this year my littles decided to be vampires....past years there have been witches, cats, mummies, and tutu fairies to name a few....but this year I think we have topped all past costumes. For the costumes I used two different patterns. The inspiration for the dress came from the Kensies's Party Dress by Everything Your Mama Made. When I was looking for the pattern for the dress I wanted something fun and flirty and something that I knew I would be able to make my own....and this dress was PERFECT for that!

I loved the bodice. It has wonderful coverage but a gorgeous lower cut back. I didn't make any changes to the bodice! The changes came with the actual skirt of the dress! There are three different layers for the skirt. The look I was going for was more of the romantic ear of vampires...yet I still wanted it to be unique and fun. The top layer is chiffon which I tried to give it a bustle look to it...poofy in the hip area. I also knew that the dress needed a little color and wanted there to be a visible variation in the lengths of the skirt so for the middle layer I used red tulle which was cut at different lengths with shorter being in the front and longer in the back. For the last layer of the skirt I used a satin material that had great flow. I wanted the front of the bottom skirt to be a little shorter in the front so I hand tucked and sewed the bottom of the skirt into the underneath of the skirt to give it a beautiful flow and extra detail.

I have to note that there was a lot of hand sewing on the top and the bottom layer of the skirts so that means I now have band aids on eight of my ten fingers....no worries...it was worth it and the blood kind of blended in with the costume....hee hee!!! For the cape I used The Cozy Hooded Cape for Kids pattern from Seamingly Smitten. Since this pattern only went up to a size 10 and I wanted the cape to be very full and a bit longer than what the pattern I had to alter it a bit to fit the look we were going for. For my littlest little I made the hooded version. She loved it!!! Because my littles are blessed with gorgeous THICK hair the hood didn't turn out as large as I wanted it to, but it is still perfect! For my biggest little I wanted to give her a bit of a different cape so I hand drafted a more authentic looking vampire collar and used heavy duty interfacing to help it stand up. I loved the way it turned out and my biggest little loved that her cape was different than her sisters. I also had to add quite a bit of length and width to her cape but the way the Cozy Hooded Cape Pattern is written it was very easy to figure out how to add length and width to the cape. 

It is amazing what you can do with a few patterns and a little imagination! Both patterns that I used for my little vampires can be used for anything from a wedding (even a winter wedding because how amazing would the cape be if it were made out of a white fur) to a graduation to a summer dress to a creepy Halloween costume and so many more things in between.  This assignment has given me the urge to go through my hundreds of patterns and let my imagination run wild! I hope you enjoyed my little vampires! To date this has been our favorite photo shoot! I had so much fun creating the costumes and we had so much fun at the photo shoot today!!! Happy Halloween and Happy Creating!!! xoxoxoxo ~Rebecca~