Front:

Back:

Verdict: eh. I really like the casualness of this dress, since it’s floor length but not fussy. The armholes ended up too big, however, and it would have required lots of ripping & restitching to fix it. I left it as is, and try to keep my arms down. =)

Charlie Brown & Lucy

Snoopy on the doghouse

Linus & Sally

Schroeder

Designing the costumes for Charlie Brown was a great project for me. It forced me to try some new things and do more than just follow a pattern. It also gave me lots of stuff to blog about. =) Now to dream up my next project…

My second attempt was to purchase 3 yards of white fleece. I traced the basic shape of the coveralls to get started. This is constructed with one piece for the front, two for the back (with a zipper), and individual sleeves.

To create Snoopy’s spot on his back, I cut a rough circle from black fleece. After I added the zipper to the back, I sewed half the spot on, and attached velcro to the other side of the spot. The spot “closes” over the zipper, so all you see of the zipper is the top few inches.

I sewed Snoopy’s distinctive black collar with more black fleece. The nice thing about fleece is that it’s stretchy, so sewing a round collar didn’t require any fancy pattern or sewing, just stretching a bit as I went. The collar covers the top edge of the zipper and gives a much cleaner finish than raw fleece.

Snoopy’s tail took the most fussing. I started with a simple tail shape in white fleece:

I turned it inside-out, and stuffed it with polyfill. It took some trial-and-error to find the right amount of stuffing to keep the tail’s shape and also be flexible and sittable, since Snoopy spends a lot of time lying on top of the dog house.

back view

Snoopy’s costume was pretty easy to put together, mostly because it’s not fitted at all. Fleece is great material to work with, since the raw edges won’t fray. I didn’t even finish the edges of Snoopy’s spot. The only thing I feel bad about is that this costume is hot! The person who is playing Snoopy is going to be burning up on stage, but at least she’ll look fuzzy.

Step 1 was to cover the parts of the shirt that I didn’t want to have striped. I started with Linus’ shirt, and planned to use fabric spray paint, so I covered every little bit that I didn’t want blackened.

The spray fabric paint was a disappointment.

As you can see, it’s pretty splotchy, and doesn’t cover the fabric very well. I added a second coat, which did help, but it still was a messy project.

So for Schroeder’s shirt, I used a foam brush and regular fabric paint to add the stripes.

This process definitely took longer, but I only had to add one coat and it looked a lot more consistent.

everything you could ever want to know about drafting sleeve patterns, from vintagesewing.info

This is the part where I realized I didn’t quite have enough fabric (who knew 3 yards wouldn’t be enough…). So I had to cut the sleeves in two pieces, with a seam running down the outer arm. Fortunately it’s hardly noticeable with all the puff.

To make the sleeve puff, I gathered the top edge of the sleeve, and sewed it into the dress. Then I made a wide hem at the bottom, leaving an inch or two open at the underarm seam. I threaded elastic through the hem and tied it off at approximately the length to fit comfortably around my arm.

puffed sleeve! yay!

I’m really happy with how the puffed sleeves turned out – I think they’re my favorite part of the whole dress.

For Sally’s collar, I traced a collar from one of my dress shirts, then cut it in half so I could have the back open (since that’s where the button is). Easy enough:

Lucy’s collar took a bit more experimenting. My first idea was to cut 2 pieces of fabric with a scalloped outer edge, then sew them together and flip inside out. That didn’t work very well, since the part where the scallops meet has to be clipped very very close to the seam (on the inside), and I couldn’t get it trimmed close enough to prevent the fabric from getting wonky. So, my second attempt was to make six separate “scallops.” Each pair is interfaced to help hold its shape, and then sewed directly to the bodice. I doubled over the hem so all the raw edges are enclosed. After Lucy tried on the dress, I’ve decided I need to tack these down so they don’t flop all over the place. =)

The skirt was the easiest part – I basically cut an entire circle of fabric, then cut an inner circle in it with the circumference to match the width of the bottom of the tunic. It took a fair bit of math (circumference = π*diameter!) but gives a very full skirt, without pleats or gathers. Lucy & Sally need to be able to move freely for the choreography, and since the fabric isn’t stretchy, the skirts needed to be very full.

the full skirt laid out with the bodice of the dress piled on top

how the skirt drapes

Next up: puffy sleeves!

Charlie Brown’s shirt only required a bit of math, to figure out how far apart the peaks should be for the zig-zag. My “pattern”:

Sally & Lucy’s dresses are rather more complicated. I looked for a pattern that would be close to what I wanted the final product to look like, but wasn’t able to find anything very close to the Peanuts’ dresses. I already had a pattern that was basically a loose-fitting tunic, so I used that as a base for the bodice, and am in the process of designing my own collars, skirts, and puffy sleeves for the dresses.

Schroeder and Linus just need stripes on their shirts. Starting with solid red and blue shirts, I calculated how wide each stripe needed to be, then marked them out with duct tape on the shirts. I found fabric spray paint that I thought would be great – I could just spray it on the shirt, since the non-stripe area was covered in duct tape. Unfortunately, the spray is nothing like regular spray paint – it’s not very consistent and tends to drip glops of paint. But I’m finishing one of the shirts that way, and striping the other shirt with old-school fabric paint & foam brush. Stripe by stripe.

This should be interesting. Our church is putting on You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown next month. I volunteered to help with sewing and general crafting, and now I have been declared the costume designer. Having never costume designed in my life, this ought to be an adventure. Fortunately there are only 6 cast members (one of whom is my husband), and only one costume per character. My research to this point mostly involves looking at Snoopy costumes (I think I’m going to skip the large Snoopy head).

Since I have less than 4 weeks til the show, I think Charlie Brown & friends are going to take up most of my crafting time. My current plan is to buy t-shirts for the guys and add the stripes, and make simple dresses for the girls, which theoretically will be a manageable amount of work. Theoretically.

Hopefully I will be back soon with some in-progress pictures!

one of my favorite parts: all the pretty colors of floss

All of my earlier projects I stitched on Aida cloth. It produces very neat stitches, but is kind of useless unless you put it in a frame and hang it on the wall. I wanted to make something that could actually be used and enjoyed around my house. Looking through a cross-stitch pattern book, I read about waste canvas – a grid of threads held together with water-soluble glue. Probably most serious cross-stitchers know about this, but somehow this had totally passed me by! After loosely stitching the waste canvas onto any fabric you want, you can use the grid to place your stitches. Once complete, you dampen the entire design, and use tweezers to pull the grid threads out.

My first waste-canvas-enabled project: veggie napkins!

I like it hanging in our dining room, and I like the idea of rotating out our decor as I make (and theoretically sell) clocks. A few more button clock pics at the link.