The Costume

We first started talking costumes when the catalogs began rolling in.  Elsie latched onto fairies early on -- which is alright with me.  I'd prefer to keep Disney at arm's-length, and Bratz-like inspiration locked away in some nuclear waste storage facility for ever and ever and ever, but I grew up with Cicely Mary Barker, and I just love fairies.  Though I don't approve of all of the recent marketing tactics, and a more modern rendering would definitely need to add different races to Barker's very English world of fairies, the decades-old fairies are, themselves, sweet and enchanting.  Never creepily sexualized or gender-toxic, these fairies are adorable, creative, and even botanically correct! 

Elsie is particularly partial to the blackeberry fairy, the hazelnut fairy, and the beechnut fairy in her little book.  It was looking as though the costume would head that way.

Then came the catalog with this tiffany-lamp-inspired fairy getup on the cover:

Elsie was SOLD.  She called it the "purple, sparkly butterfly fairy" and she wanted it.

"Easy!" you're thinking.  "Order it and you're set."  But I don't buy costumes.  I don't care if anyone else buys costumes (effectively everyone does, these days).  I just don't buy them.  I don't buy costumes for a lot of reasons.  Some small: I really freaking hate garments that are 100% polyester.  Others big: I remember, with such fondness and such excitement, making my own costumes from scratch with my brother and my extremely devoted dad.  I want Elsie to have that in her life.  I think that Halloween will mean more than candy to her if she does.

So I set out to make something that could conform to Elsie's vision of "purple sparkly butterfly fairy" knowing full-well that our efforts would not result in anything close to the girl on the cover of the magazine. 

I started with wings.  Framed wings, like the ones in the inspiring picture, seemed too much effort.  I know how I COULD make them (sculptural wire and a high-stretch fabric), but they would be too fragile.  Too bulky to store.  Just too damn much effort.  Instead, I envisioned wings like a cape, attached at the back of the neck, the corners worn on a finger-ring or a wrist-band. 

Children are more likely to embrace a change from their expectations if they are included in the creative process.  So I ordered a silk scarf and some textile dye, and I told Elsie to go to town.  Paint her own wings:

If anyone knows how to get fabric dye off of PVC railing, do let me know!

I do not have the hang of dying fabric yet.  This is my first time, and I mustn't have set it properly, because the color faded dramatically when washed.  The wings end up more moth-tones than butterfly, but at least the art is still Elsie's.  She's very proud of this.

The rest was simple sewing hack.  I measured her wingspan from the center (just held it up to Elsie making arms like a T), cut off the excess on a diagonal, hemmed the edges sloppily on my machine with a straight stitch, and sewed the three pieces of silk together in a way that looked butterfly-like.  I sewed a couple of my old hair elastics to the wing corners, and I cut out a black felt butterfly body for the center, and sewed this into the middle, where I gathered some folds.  Because Elsie suddenly HATES black, I then covered the body (along with the rest of my person and property) with gold glitter.  

Two glittery purple pipe cleaners and a headband, and the deal was done.

Somewhere along the line, Elsie dropped the "fairy" part of her costume idea, so sparkly purple butterfly was all that remained, sparing me the fru-fru dress and the magic wand she had previously demanded.  A simple, easy costume that can be worn over any weight of clothing.

I share this for a few reasons:

I'm proud of my work and am an insufferable bragger!

It wasn't that hard to make, and the post might help another parent-in-need with ideas come next October.

Most of all, I share this to show that sometimes a child can have an image of what she wants, and it's more than you can give her (for whatever reason -- cost, inventory, time, opportunity, philosophy), but she can end up with something quite different and just as loved.  I think that involving Elsie in the making, letting her paint the wings completely by herself and play with the entire pack of sparkly pipe cleaners and make some choices about the design, went a really long way to her adapting her vision of the costume.  She looks nothing like the picture she picked out, yet she is so happy with her results.

It might be different for older children.  I don't know.  I'm not there yet.  Maybe an eight-year-old would sit and sulk with this faded, moth-tone silk.  But this four-year-old was tickled pink by her purple butterfly wings.  And so was I!


*  By the way, they sell this style of butterfly wings in toy stores, too.  Just in case you are restricted by time rather than stubborn personality.