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- Sep 12, 2022
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If you missed the Halloween Costume Contest event here on MLPTP, I made a costume for Sweet Clover (mine is German, so Kleeblatt).
My partner and I finally sat down and went through the photos from our little photoshoot of her, so it's time to make a post and share all the deets! Hope you don't mind a long write-up!
I've had a passion for costumes all my life, and around 2010 got really into cosplay. I liked tackling really ambitious costumes that hadn't been done often and I learned a ton about sewing and making over the years, but I also love miniatures and getting detailed. So, coming back to MLPTP after many years away from my pony hobby, just in time for the Halloween costume contest, I was very excited to see what I could do with tiny pony wear.
And it didn't take long for me to decide what to make.
The idea that took root kept making me laugh. It was going to be so silly, and combine two 1980's flavors I love. Of course I had to do it.
In 2017 I took on a VERY ambitious project, a commission for my cousin's daughter, of Sarah's costume from the iconic ballroom scene in Jim Henson's 1986 film, Labyrinth. Her mom and I grew up on films like this, and I was thrilled to work on it with them.
The film is a wonderful semi-dark fantasy full of goblins, puppetry, a young Jennifer Connolly, the irreplaceable David Bowie, and lots and lots of glitter, but this scene in particular, and its sudden departure from the setting of the rest of the film, thrilled the hearts of thousands of '80's youths and ours too:
I spent about a year researching and fabric hunting and sewing to get it as close to the film as I could. Here is how our version turned out. My cousin's daughter was gorgeous in it and we had such a blast cosplaying together! I can't wait until we can dress up again.
I have lots of small material scraps left from this project because I'm loath to discard things, and perfect opportunities like this are exactly why! It was time for me to take all the knowledge and effort and time and investment that had gone into this costume and use it to make...
... a version for a pony.
I jumped right in to patterning, with grungy childhood Bow-Tie volunteering as my model so Kleeblatt could stay nice and clean.
Pony pattern pieces are truly bizarre!
The human-sized version of the gown required multiple layers of fabric in order to replicate the structure, shimmer, and translucency of the screen original. I could do that in some places but thicknesses become a big issue when working in miniature. So the bodice is just two fabrics, heat-fused together to get a hint of the flowery lace and the rainbow sheen she needs. All the edges are turned to the inside and fused so they won't fray.
Like the original, the skirt ate up a lottttt of fabric to make all those deep knife pleats.
I had to fuse numerous small scraps of iridescent fabric together to make a long enough piece to layer underneath, but the top layer conveniently used a very wide but short scrap that I hemmed off the bottom of my cousin's skirt. It was almost the perfect amount! And at this scale, there wasn't any need for a giant hoop petticoat to hold the shape outward. In fact, after I hand-sewed the pleats to the bodice, I needed to run a hidden series of tack stitches through all the pleats at two heights, to keep the whole skirt from standing up like a fan over the pony's back.
To finish the skirt without adding bulk, I painted each layer's edge with Fray-check, working near a bathroom fan and running away for fresh air frequently because that stuff is not for breathing, lol.
For the sleeves, I tried layering 3 fabrics as on the human version, but chose lighter weight fabric scraps. I tested scraps of the silver lace but it just didn't translate at small scale so I opted for softness over sparkle and used a thin fused poly with kind of a dotted texture to it. These all got flat-lined together with tiny hand stitches using a small needle. Clearly I had gone slightly mad at this point but I was having so much fun with tiny sewing, and using my scrap stash!
Things were looking ...sus at this stage.
But, once I had the sleeves all gathered and stitched together (again, by hand, as there was no way I was going to be able to manipulate any of this through a machine) and set into the bodice, it was starting to look like a ballgown! ... for a pony! .... I kept looking at it and just breaking out into laughter.
The contest rules meant I couldn't customize a pony, it needed to be a costume! So, if I wanted her to have that huge cascade of hair, I was going to have to get utterly silly and make a wig for a pony.
A Wig. For a pony.
Y'all.
(to be continued...)
My partner and I finally sat down and went through the photos from our little photoshoot of her, so it's time to make a post and share all the deets! Hope you don't mind a long write-up!
I've had a passion for costumes all my life, and around 2010 got really into cosplay. I liked tackling really ambitious costumes that hadn't been done often and I learned a ton about sewing and making over the years, but I also love miniatures and getting detailed. So, coming back to MLPTP after many years away from my pony hobby, just in time for the Halloween costume contest, I was very excited to see what I could do with tiny pony wear.
And it didn't take long for me to decide what to make.
The idea that took root kept making me laugh. It was going to be so silly, and combine two 1980's flavors I love. Of course I had to do it.
In 2017 I took on a VERY ambitious project, a commission for my cousin's daughter, of Sarah's costume from the iconic ballroom scene in Jim Henson's 1986 film, Labyrinth. Her mom and I grew up on films like this, and I was thrilled to work on it with them.
The film is a wonderful semi-dark fantasy full of goblins, puppetry, a young Jennifer Connolly, the irreplaceable David Bowie, and lots and lots of glitter, but this scene in particular, and its sudden departure from the setting of the rest of the film, thrilled the hearts of thousands of '80's youths and ours too:
I spent about a year researching and fabric hunting and sewing to get it as close to the film as I could. Here is how our version turned out. My cousin's daughter was gorgeous in it and we had such a blast cosplaying together! I can't wait until we can dress up again.
I have lots of small material scraps left from this project because I'm loath to discard things, and perfect opportunities like this are exactly why! It was time for me to take all the knowledge and effort and time and investment that had gone into this costume and use it to make...
... a version for a pony.
I jumped right in to patterning, with grungy childhood Bow-Tie volunteering as my model so Kleeblatt could stay nice and clean.
Pony pattern pieces are truly bizarre!The human-sized version of the gown required multiple layers of fabric in order to replicate the structure, shimmer, and translucency of the screen original. I could do that in some places but thicknesses become a big issue when working in miniature. So the bodice is just two fabrics, heat-fused together to get a hint of the flowery lace and the rainbow sheen she needs. All the edges are turned to the inside and fused so they won't fray.
Like the original, the skirt ate up a lottttt of fabric to make all those deep knife pleats.
I had to fuse numerous small scraps of iridescent fabric together to make a long enough piece to layer underneath, but the top layer conveniently used a very wide but short scrap that I hemmed off the bottom of my cousin's skirt. It was almost the perfect amount! And at this scale, there wasn't any need for a giant hoop petticoat to hold the shape outward. In fact, after I hand-sewed the pleats to the bodice, I needed to run a hidden series of tack stitches through all the pleats at two heights, to keep the whole skirt from standing up like a fan over the pony's back.
To finish the skirt without adding bulk, I painted each layer's edge with Fray-check, working near a bathroom fan and running away for fresh air frequently because that stuff is not for breathing, lol.
For the sleeves, I tried layering 3 fabrics as on the human version, but chose lighter weight fabric scraps. I tested scraps of the silver lace but it just didn't translate at small scale so I opted for softness over sparkle and used a thin fused poly with kind of a dotted texture to it. These all got flat-lined together with tiny hand stitches using a small needle. Clearly I had gone slightly mad at this point but I was having so much fun with tiny sewing, and using my scrap stash!
Things were looking ...sus at this stage.But, once I had the sleeves all gathered and stitched together (again, by hand, as there was no way I was going to be able to manipulate any of this through a machine) and set into the bodice, it was starting to look like a ballgown! ... for a pony! .... I kept looking at it and just breaking out into laughter.
The contest rules meant I couldn't customize a pony, it needed to be a costume! So, if I wanted her to have that huge cascade of hair, I was going to have to get utterly silly and make a wig for a pony.
A Wig. For a pony.
Y'all.
(to be continued...)
