And on to the next costume!

As soon as I saw this dress ...I knew I wanted it!!!  It is from the new Alice in Wonderland as well.  It is when Alice grows huge and is in the Queen of Hearts' court.  They use the curtains to "clothe this enormous girl."

And thus began one of my more insane projects (and between you and me, that is saying something!)

I started with what I had.  I had a LOT of muslin and I realized that I could dye it for a few bucks.  I'd never done it before, but how hard could it be???  Well it wasn't extremely hard, but it was very time consuming as I had to sit there and stir it for 30 minutes (yeah, that doesn't sound long until you do it!)  That took care of getting the right colored UNDER-skirt.  Yeah, I know, you can't even see it.  In my defense, in the original plan in my head, you were going to see it, but plans change.  Luckily by this point I'd figured out my ruffle foot and whipping that skirt together wasn't too much of a headache.  But now we've come to the point in my saga where there was a REAL problem.  The over-dress.  Now the hunt began.  The hunt for The Perfect Fabric.  I soon (after several stores and many websites) realized that it really didn't exist, especially not in my price range (super cheap).  So I settled for some white mesh fabric and fabric paint!  I tried the spray fabric paint, but it was more expensive, I went through a whole can just on the bodice, and it bled more.  So, with a lot of masking tape, a foam brush and a lot of time I created my own stripey-ness!  And of course I added the little black hearts and white dots all over too!  Before I went all crazy with the painting I cut out my pieces so I wouldn't have to paint fabric that was just getting cut off.  I used a dress I had to make a pattern for the bodice and decided to do a circle skirt that I later sliced up the middle.  Then came the ruffles.  Oh the ruffles.  Yeah, I had to paint all those too.  I was getting really sick of painting stripes by this point!  Well, long story short (ha) I got the overdress made!  Yay!  Next came the poofy tulle skirt!  Let's just say there was so much tulle in my bonus room that it was sometimes hard to find me!  And P.S. you can't use a ruffle foot on tulle.  Grrrrrr.  So gather and gather and gather some more!  I then needed the rope belt (to complete the "curtains" look).  I found some piping cord that I already had, dyed it red, braided it to make a thicker cord, decided it wasn't red enough, painted it with Puffy Paint, made big tassels out of crochet thread, attached them and... BINGO!  An amazing rope belt.  Yes I know you are thinking I am totally insane.  It's true, I was thinking the same thing.  And here's the finished product...