My Little Mermaid

My pretty little mermaid! Like the others, Leanna chose what she wanted to be for Halloween. I had picked up the material from the remnants bin at Joann's. I paid $8.00 for it, and although I didn't know what I would do with it, I knew it would come in handy for something!

This year I did all the costumes without actual patterns, Leanna's was tricky. I could have just made the bottom into a skirt, but I decided to attach the fins to the sides. I drew one fin freehand on cardboard, then used that as a pattern piece. I didn't want to make the bottom of the dress tight(like a "real" mermaid) because it had to be tapered but still have enough room for comfortable walking. So I added the lace to make it pretty too. I played around with the idea of making a shell top, but I just couldn't get the shape right and I didn't know how to make it look like a shell without padding them. Padding them would have made it look like I was trying to give her a chest-so I definitely wanted to stay away from that! So I ended up basically making a tube top with straps and put lace on the bottom. Her wig was very very thin, but I paid $1.00 for it, so I wasn't expecting too much. I got some orange spray to fill in her hair with too.