Esmeralda the Gypsy Costume

Charlie fell in love with the 1996 Disney "Hunchback of Notre Dame" movie this summer, so of course she chose Esmeralda for this year's Halloween costume!  I used Simplicity's 2845 for the basic pattern and made a few changes.  

Everything needed to be as exact a copy as possible - but who wants to keep tucking a four-year-old's shirt into her skirt all night long?  The pattern I used was a dress, so I cut it in half at the waist and made the top portion in the shirt fabric and the bottom portion in the skirt fabric.  If you do this, be sure to add a 5/8 inch seam allowance on the shirt and skirt patterns where you sew them together.

Charlie wasn't thrilled with having a transparent scarf fabric - that's not what the pictures of Esmeralda looked like, so we went with a satin.  The pattern has you cut a square and double it - that's a lot of satin, so I just made a triangle and hemmed the edges.  Our original plan was to knot it around her waist, but that was difficult with satin, so I trimmed off enough from the edges that would've been tied so that I could sew on velcro.  As you can see from the photo, I didn't quite get it trimmed evenly!

Esmeralda's turquoise belt has yellow stripes.  I used yellow satin ribbon that I fused onto the belt with Steam-a-Seam II lite.  I also used velcro to attach the belt, but it felt too tight to Charlie, so I added an extension (which you can see in the photo) to attach the velcro onto.

For a trick-or-treat bag, I sewed up two rectangular sacks - one in purple and one in the shirt fabric for a lining.  I put the lining into the purple sack (just set in, wrong sides together), and turned down the top edge and sewed in place.  Purple straps (long rectangular pieces sewn together with the ends left open and turned right side out) finished it up.  

Oh - and I found the coin trim at JoAnn's!  Clip on gold hoop earrings and a tambourine completed the outfit.  Charlie's been practicing her gypsy dancing with her cat Moose as an audience!

Happy Creating!  Deborah