Thursday, September 18, 2008

Starting my Halloween Costume

So I know it's mid-September and Halloween is more than a month away, but I was invited to a fabulous Costume Party in a month and it's The Wizard of Oz themed. We can dress up as anything Oz related. Soooo, I decided to pick an obscure character from of the lesser known book The Lost Princess of Oz (#11 of the Oz series), published first in 1917. We have a copy inherited from my grandparents that is a 1930's reprint that is of course extremely old and probably quite valuable still. Anyway that was a tangent. The point was to say that the character I chose was none other than Cayke the Cookie Cook and her fabulous magical jeweled dishpan (pictured in the book illustration above right, courtesy of Amazon.com books search). She is from Yip country and is known for her fabulous cookies. The only way she makes good cookies is because of her jeweled dishpan, other than that she admits to being a rather poor cook. She is a pretty normal person, generally kind and good natured, and ill-tempered at times. Good ol' L. Frank Baum wrote her as a strong personality luckily. I posted this picture to help you visualize what my costume will look like.
I chose a simple colonial pattern that included a shawl and mob cap from Simplicity Costume line(#3723, FYI). It's in the top left-hand corner of the picture. The cap according to the pattern won't be as long in the back as Cayke's and I'll probably have to modify the sleeves a bit or not. I chose a dark cream/oatmeal colored cloth with a lighter cream leaf print on it, the bows at the elbows are a deep sky blue for a sweet contrast. My sister says that print is too plain for her. Luckily, she doesn't have to wear it. Anyway, yesterday I bought an oval turkey roasting pan from Wal-Mart. I plan to spray paint it gold and get some big fake jewels from JoAnns or Michaels to stick on the outside. I'm hoping it will be pretty awesome. LOL.

The fabric is somewhat akin to this pattern:

Although the background is a darker cream and the flowers are white. Alas in all my searching, I could not find the exact match. Photos in the future will have to suffice.

1 comment:

Naazju said...

Catie--

You're freakin' fabulous. Have I ever told you that?

Your costume sounds amazing! You're so creative and you always go all-out. I'm excited for you to start work on it so I can see the step-by-step process and then see the finished product!