Costume Upcycle: Red Too Hot to Formal Red Devil

Welcome back to the Costume Upcycle Series! In this series I will take a few of our oldest costumes from the clearance section and will either style or alter them in a new way that fits current costume trends! Each edition of the series will increase in difficulty in skill level. If you’re new here, you can click here to see what costumes I will be altering. In the last two blog posts, I turned a Twilight Fairy costume into a Rave Fairy here and a Fine Foxy Mama costume into Scary Spice here. Let’s get started on Episode 3 with a devil costume upcycle!

COSTUME: RED TOO HOT ADULT COSTUME

Costume-Upcycle-Red-Too-Hot-Adult-Costume-Devil

MATERIALS

  • 5 yards red tulle fabric
  • Sewing pins
  • 1 inch Elastic
  • Scissors

THE PROCESS

Let me start by saying the way I went about completing this project was way more complicated than it needed to be. So this project was a huge learning experience. My dilemma was figuring out a way to sew a non stretch fabric onto a stretchy fabric. This usually doesn’t work because once you sew a non-stretch fabric onto the hem of a stretch fabric the hem either won’t stretch at all or the seams will all pop.

I came up with the idea to sew multiple layers of tulle to the elastic and then sew the elastic to the dress. It wasn’t a bad idea, but then I started getting weird ideas during the process that did not work out!

First I pinned the tulle to the elastic and the dress. This was just to make sure I got the shape correct.

Right before I sewed it, I thought, “Hmmm won’t you be able to see the elastic?” So I decided to sew only small sections of the elastic onto the dress to leave little “loops” where I could feed the tulle through to cover it. Sound confusing? It was. I don’t know why I did it.

devil costume upcycle
A little loop
devil costume upcycle
Tulle fed through the loop

devil costume upcycle

It doesn’t look too bad, but you can definitely still see the elastic peeking through.  The whole process was really complicated. So I decided to provide you with two different ways to go about the project that are way easier!:

Elastic Method for Tulle

  1. Dye elastic red with Rit DyeMore fabric dye
  2. Sew tulle onto elastic
  3. Sew elastic onto dress
  4. Done!

Stretch Mesh Method

  1. Use stretch tulle or mesh
  2.  Sew multiple layers it directly to the dress
  3. Done!

If I would have been able to find a stretch tulle fabric I could have saved myself lots of time! In the end I still had fun wearing the costume!

devil costume upcycle

I didn’t have a pitchfork at home so I badly photoshopped one in but you can find one here!

devil costume upcycle

devil costume upcycle

Stay tuned for the next installment of the Costume Upcycle series!

Alia

Alia

Star Wars Nerd. Disney Nerd. Anime Nerd. Cosplay Nerd. All Around Nerd!

(Everyday is Halloween)
Alia

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