Book Parade: Heather the Violet Fairy costume!

Today the kids' school had a book parade, where the kids chose a character from a book they have read this year and dressed up to parade around the gym.  Little Sister's recent favorites are the Rainbow Magic Rainbow Fairies chapter books (I have been reading them to her).  She chose Heather, the Violet Fairy, both because it was her favorite color of the rainbow AND because she has the same hair as that fairy (blond and curly with bangs!)  Luckily for me, that fairy also has a pretty simple costume, and the free short sleeved peasant dress pattern in size 4-6 from Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom was perfect for it!

I wanted two layers of fabric to give the dress a more ethereal fairy effect, so I chose a silky purple (almost magenta) fabric I found for 100 yen a meter and topped it with a soft lilac stretch lacy fabric. The color came out exactly like the book cover, which is good because was Little Sister ever a stickler for detail!

I'm experimenting with putting a jump in my longer posts so that more posts appear on my main page--read the rest after you click, and let me know if you love/hate having a jump!  I'll show you the book cover so you can see how well I matched this dress up :)




For the two layers, I just cut out the dress twice.  There are 4 pattern pieces (front, back, and the two sleeves) and I basically treated the two pieces as one.  For the front and back pattern pieces, I basted the fabrics together at the neckline, but I sewed the side seams separately so that they would flow like two layers of skirt.  For the sleeves, I actually sewed the two layers right-sides together along the flat edge (what would become the armhole), then turned them right side out and basted the tops (what would become part of the neckline) and sewed them to the body as one piece, but then the bottom of the sleeves were already finished nicely so I didn't have to hem them.   I gathered them using the shirring (elastic thread) method outlined in the tutorial.

I also skipped hemming the bottom of the skirts by cutting the fabric so that the bottom of the dress was the selvage of the fabrics.  Made it a pretty quick sew!

Love her brother reading in the background ;)

Again to match the book cover, I added a couple of rows of shirring to the dress to create an empire waistline.  Comfy, easy, and effective!  I just pinned really well to make sure my layers didn't shift while I was sewing the shirring.

On the book cover, according to Little Sister, the fairy has:
1. "side bangs"
2. A necklace that doesn't touch her dress
3. Two bracelets
4. Tall purple socks
5. Flower clip by her ear

Little Sister's book choice

Pretty darn good match!

In action at the book parade--she made sure everything was just like the book.

Accessorizing ended up being pretty easy--we had one really long purple plastic bead necklace that I was able to cut into a short necklace and two bracelets.  I had to shorten the necklace after this photo shoot because Little Sister was adamant that it shouldn't touch the dress!  The flower hairpins were a gift from her aunt's trip to Hawaii, and they matched the cover pretty much exactly.   The purple knee socks were a bit of an issue with Sister, since hers weren't as tall as the fairy's socks, but since I made her dress longer (don't tell!) it worked out.  And she had to grudgingly agree to wear pink shoes since she doesn't have any purple ones currently.  Oh, and the wings and wand!  These US dollar store staples aren't nearly as easy to come by here in Tokyo, but luckily our friends who were visiting from the US last week made room in their luggage to bring fairy wings that my mom got for me and wands--not only for this costume, but also for party favors for the 6 little girls coming to our house this weekend for a fairy birthday party! They saved me a bunch of money and we will have some happy little fairies running around tomorrow!

And here are a few more fun fairy pictures--I couldn't resist taking photos in the little park on our block, with the big cherry trees in bloom!  I will post soon on our family blog about more of the Sakura viewing that we did this season--the cherry blossoms really are amazing!