Nnovember 9 2025

At some point I either have to start writing these on time, or stop apologizing for their delays. But today is not that day. Life’s been crazy, as always. I’m here now. Sorry.

October saw me single-mindedly devoted to Halloween sewing. No other projects, no other progress, just designing and patterning and drafting and sewing in every spare moment I could scrape together.

Remember I ended September with my jester hat and shorts both patterned out. Constructing them happened quickly enough, especially with my partner helping iron on interfacing and cut out fabric and iron seams.

The hat also got some bells at the tips. I made those removable, just in case, but never ended up actually removing them. I was having too much fun jingling. The shorts here are constructed but still need to be gathered at the bottom, which I did by sewing a channel and threading some elastic through. That gave me a bit more control over how things draped, though only a bit.

Once the jester was passable I pivoted to the cloak for our evil advisor, our grand sorcerer. The outside is velvet (which I’d never worked with before) and the lining is a black stretch fabric (a horrible material for a lining, only chosen so that it could match with the gloves (which I ran out of time to make anyway)). The first mock-up is a straight up execution of this caroling cloak pattern I got from SewingPatternsbyCHD on Etsy , which I do intend to tidy up eventually for my own use. The hood was great, but our sorceress didn’t want it to tie in the front. That meant it had to balance over their shoulders, which meant shifting things significantly in the pattern.

I removed a lot of the fabric that had been falling behind the arms and added about a foot of extra length at the bottom so it would sweep dramatically just above the floor. I also added in shoulder pads, which I’d never worked with before. This changed how I had to go about connecting all the pattern pieces at the end, but added a little bit of much needed structure and helped the shoulders stay in place.

The swoosh on this thing is amazing.

Later in the month I also added on this gorgeous chainmail-esque mesh to the front bits, to stop the cape from drifting backwards off the shoulders and to add some drama and shine. The mesh did not want to play nice at all, so I ended up hand stitching it all down and only securing the top of each curve, so unevenness was transformed into dramatic drapes.

I did most of this hand stitching on my lunch breaks at work, and finished it up on Halloween day, right after our office Halloween photo shoot.

My bodice was the first big of quilting I’ve ever done, and was an absolute mess to execute. I based it off of this bodysuit pattern from Grasser which I’ve made good use of in the past. That pattern is made for stretch fabric, and I was working with 100% cotton (which is So Much Easier to actually sew with but more finicky to pattern for). To add some sizing flexibility back in I had it lace up in the back, which had the added bonus of bringing in some pseudo-medieval flair.

I cut my various fabrics into diamonds, sewed them into a larger patchwork sheet as randomly as I could, and then cut my pattern pieces out.

The hardest part was arranging the pattern pieces on the fabric so that the jagged diamond bottoms would connect nicely at the sides. Then I traced these pattern pieces onto my lining fabric, an old sheet that’s been sitting in my scrap pile for years. It was really important that this piece get lined because all those quilting seams were making for a nightmare texture on the inside, not to mention the risk of fraying.

For the sleeves I took the original pattern piece, chopped it short, and stretched it out to about four times its normal width. Standard puffy sleeve technique.

I ran out of time to make a nice spiky collar so I’m using one I crocheted a few years ago, when I got really into crochet lace for a couple months. It’s a bit scratchy so I’ve never actually worn it for more than a few minutes, but thankfully the neckline on this top is high enough that the collar doesn’t actually touch my skin at all.

I also gathered some tulle up to make a very quick and messy petticoat for our princess’s dress. And then it was Halloween!

Here’s our group costume, all together!

It should make for some fun ren fair trips next Summer.