Halloween...What to be?

Here is the thing, I love Halloween! Like really I absolutely love it.  This is not always the case for people who work in the costume field.  Some of us sincerely HATE Halloween.  I do understand the sentiment, because when you work in costuming and Halloween rolls around everyone expects your costume to be the tits.  Sometimes that is a lot to live up to

Then of course there are people who expect you to be jazzed out of your skin and just so pumped to help them with their costumes.  They usually want this for free, like, "hey isn't this just the most exciting costume idea in the history of halloween? Don't you just dearly want to help me out, I'll allow you to do this for free!"  Well thanks for a stellar offer like that but as the joker said in the Dark Night, "If you're good at something don't ever do it for free."

***Full disclaimer and this is not an invitation to solicit me, but I often do things for free.  It's because I'm a nice person or in layman's terms, a Sucker!

All of that aside, I don't usually make my own costumes anymore because I'm married to a teacher whose high school students are thrilled when she dresses up.  However this year she has decided that rather than having me make her something new, she is really just wanted to be Mr. Potatohead again. I made her this costume a year or two ago and she sewed the eyes, she's wicked proud!

That was a really roundabout way of telling you that I get to make a costume for me this year! Hooray!, Now for the decision process, I wanted to be something sexy and powerful, yet not slutty.  This was a hard thing to figure out, especially because when you google costumes for women this is what comes up:

I fully support a woman's right to vamp up on Halloween and wear something they enjoy, and even get some consensual tail, but this is too much for me.  Sexy candy bar was never on my dream Halloween list.  So, I am going to be Rosie the Riveter and not just in a denim shirt with a bandana.  I want to go full on WWII era reproduction jumpsuit in chambray, with polkadot headscarf, and attachable placard. Basically  I want something I can be proud of pattern wise and also something comfy and rewearable. Yes I can re-wear a chambray jumpsuit, just watch me.

I want it to evoke the spirit and tenacity of these beefy broads:

Now for the jumpsuit pattern.  Of course looking through pictures of vintage patterns I have found exactly what pattern I want.  However that has not correlated to finding the actual pattern itself, because that is always the way.  I do have a patterning book from the 40's and I'm hoping that with that book and my knowledge of pattern drafting I can make it work. This pattern is white hot!

I've used this fabric width conversion chart to figure out how much fabric I will need this project. Apparently 39" fabric has gone out of vogue in the last 70 years.  So with 2 3/4 yards of fabric at 56" wide, I'm going to be in business.  I've chosen a dark indigo chambray that I will be ordering from Fabric.com.  I'm in love and super excited!

Stay tuned for incoming updates on the costume creation.