This year was Noah’s first Halloween and I really wanted to
get into it. I found the cutest shark costume for him online and decided make
it a family theme costume – something I vowed never to do but was suddenly
excited about. Instead of three sharks I thought it would be fun to do a shark,
mermaid, and pirate. This is my mermaid costume DIY journey. Nothing ever goes
as smoothly as it seems like it should on Pinterest.
I’ll start by saying my most favorite costume that I ever
wore growing up was the mermaid costume I donned in kindergarten. I only
remember a few things from that year; making donuts in class, pretending to
sleep during naptime, and my mermaid costume. It was modeled after The Little
Mermaid, as most mermaid costumes are. My mother sewed it for me. It was a
dress; the top, a nude tank top with purple sparkling shells sewn on, and a
shiny green skirt with fins on the bottom. The fins stuck out to the sides and
would have been pretty convincing if not for my feet peeking out. On my feet I
wore my favorite purple peep-toe jellies, which I wore everyday and still think
of.
My local craft store. Funny I never considered whether or
not there was a craft store in Kuwait City. There isn’t. We have a fabric souk,
stationary supply store, and True Value. The fabric souk seemed the most
promising of the three and I enlisted the help of an expert sewer and crafty
friend who knows the souk well. It took several visits, but eventually I got
some fabric. It was not what Mr. Siriano recommended. They didn’t have organza
or stretchy teal fabric anywhere at the souk. I did find one that was made of
gold tinsel and red thread, which looked like salmon scales and got totally
side tracked. I ended up buying this thinking I’d hot glue it together to make
a skirt (wrong). I also bought chiffon thinking it was see-through like
organza. this was also a fail, too heavy and not enough body for fins. Tulle
would have been a better substitute in case you are thinking of going in the
same direction.
Things got more complicated. Having no craft store to simply
buy shells from I had to order something online. There wasn’t much and it was
hard to determine what exactly I was getting in a 5 pound bag of seashells for
$20 on Amazon. In addition, I realized that with a frequently nursing baby who
needs to be held at all times, shells on my chest might not be the right
choice. Thwarted again. This is where my kindergarten costume became the
inspiration. And I bought a sewing machine.
For a first sewing project usually people go with a pillow
or a set of napkins. Me on the other hand, I like a challenge, especially when
I’m sleep deprived. What started as something I could just hot glue turned into
a full on sewing venture. A friend of mine recommended taking classes on
Craftsy.com to start my journey. I decided to make a pencil skirt with my
fabric and let the costume go from there.
I ventured back to the fabric souk to collection notions
with a new project checklist. Once my sewing machine arrived, I panicked upon
reading the instructions. Well, trying to read the instructions. Noah was
bouncing in my lap, trying to grab and eat them. It all seemed too much. I let
the machine sit on the counter for several days before diving in.
Then after taking my measurements, I nearly fainted and it
took several more days for me to get the courage to continue. “Don’t let the
numbers upset you,” the Craftsy instructor said. How could they not?!
Keeping in mind the original Christian Siriano tutorial, I
bought the recommended shape wear top to hot glue the shells on (before
deciding to go in another direction). Besides not having shells to glue onto it,
they don’t make those suckers in DDD. My breasts were spilling out. This is not
as sexy as you are imagining - my nursing pads were spilling out too. Luckily
my mom remembered how she made the shells on my costume 25 years ago and we
improvised the rest of the outfit from there.
In theory, sewing isn’t really complicated. Once I got into
it, I understood what I was doing and actually enjoyed using the machine.
However, sewing tinsel proved rather challenging. So did removing erroneous
seams when I did such a good job matching the thread color to the one in the
skirt. My thoughts went from “I’m amazing! Once I finish this project, I’ll
design my whole wardrobe and I will look fantastic and stylish!” to “WTF is going
on? WHY why did I choose to sew TINSEL for my first sewing project? If the
needle pulls the fabric one more time I’m going to light this on fire and take
a nap.”
A lot of discussion, heartache, and sewing trial and error brought
us to a pencil skirt with a short peplum and a nude body shaper with ruched
fabric sewn as shells. This was not at all what the original was supposed to
be. Nor did it scream mermaid (looking at the pictures now, I think it did but
not at the time). No matter how I styled it, I looked like a 1950s housewife
going to a Halloween party. I looked like my grandmother going to a Halloween
party. My figure, already considered “womanly” now post-baby is overwhelmingly
so. It is not the slight boyish figure of the girls modeling their mermaid
costumes on Pinterest. I tried to embrace it, after all you’ve to go work with
what you have, but in the end left the house wearing a blue t-shirt with my
fishtail skirt.
Even so, my costume miraculously proved successful. When we
finally arrived at the family Halloween Party, everyone got the picture that I
was a mermaid accompanying my little shark - who stole the show anyways! I even
got several compliments on the skirt. Although nothing went as smoothly as
promised, it was definitely a learning experience and I am grateful for it. I
won’t burn the skirt after all.
Have you ever tried a DIY project after seeing a tutorial online? How did it go?
