Christmas Tree Dress

Like usual I am many months behind on blogging...but I have a day off so I may even do 2 in one day!

This one is a costume I made for a Christmas show from last year. They wanted their emcee dressed as a Christmas tree. A Christmas tree that lights up.

Challenge accepted!!

So I decided to do a full skirt/corset look. I bought the corset - there are some amazing things you can find on eBay. I designed and made the skirt based on a hoop skirt Instructable. And I made the pattern(s) myself.
Instead of having a skirt over a hoop skirt, I put the hoops in the skirt itself - what can I can say, I'm a little lazy.

Also, instead of using one piece of fabric like in the instructable I made a graduated skirt - each layer gets a little bigger. Each layer had a circular peplum to be the actual fluff for the tree.

Here's the completed skirt:

Then I added garland and lights - the lights are kinda hidden in the garland in this picture. I made an inside bustle/fanny pack to hold the battery packs for the skirt.

I used wired pixie lights. They were light, they were LED so the didn't get hot, and the batteries last forever. But because they were battery powered they only came in short lengths: 7 to 10 feet. There were 3 sets of lights on the skirt, 2 on the bodice, and 1 on the hat.

 

I made some ornaments out of craft foam - I needed to keep things light since the hoops and batteries made the skirt pretty heavy.

 

 

The skirt itself looked so great on my dress form I used it for a Christmas tree for awhile:

 

The hat was kind of fun to make too - and it kind of works on it's own. I used a pattern for a party hat I found online. I used buckram for the hat and ended up filling it with Styrofoam and floral foam. The Styrofoam was in the top and supported the star. The floral foam was on the bottom and I carved out a notch for the battery pack to fit into. I stuck pins through the outside to kind of keep the foam in place.

The star in the picture below is not the one I ended up using. This was an actual Christmas tree star and it ended up making the hat too top heavy. So I used it as a pattern and made one out of craft foam.

I don't have any pictures of just the corset. It was a great corset, but since it came from China it took a month and a half to get here. Good thing I ordered it right after Halloween. So I only had a day or too to put on the garland and lights.  I had to use 2 sets of lights because corsets are essentially two separate pieces - two halves - so I needed a set of lights for each side. She kept those battery packs in her boobs.

I also put together a Christmas Can-Can dance for this same Christmas show and incorporated the Christmas Tree. I made the Can-Can skirts as well. Here's a picture of Santa, the Christmas Tree, and me and my fellow can-canners.