The Mad Hatter Costume

Here it is, the Mad Hatter Costume and this time it is my daughter not Johnny Depp.

I’m not sure just what this says about me, but I pulled most of the mad hatter costume out of my wardrobe.

I had already dyed an old, gold, frock coat charcoal grey, it was waiting for me to restitch the button holes as the dye had not taken on the thread, but for this costume it seamed in keeping so I left them gold. I added some lace fabric I had to the sleeve ends.

I had a pink cotton shirt and the black waistcoat which was just a little large so I stitched two pieces of black ribbon on either side of the back of the waistcoat so they could be pulled together and tied in a bow to make it a little tighter.

The brown trousers were tucked into knee high stripy socks (the socks were my daughters) which made them flair out nicely.

I raided my ribbon box and stitched 7 or 8 pieces into the left hand pocket of the coat and I replaced the laces in my daughters walking boots with orange ribbon.

All in all not a bad starting point.

I had to buy some fabric for the pink scarf around the hat and the handkerchief in the pocket. I chose Caress taffeta lining fabric in Salmon and Doll pink. I hemmed a square of the salmon and stitched it into the right hand coat pocket.

For the bow tie I found some Liquorice Allsorts patterned cotton fabric on eBay which is pretty close to the original. I think the original looks like smudged allsorts on black silk. I really like this cotton, it’s fun, just not as abstract, but this costume is not a faithful reproduction, so I was happy with that.

My daughter and I made the Bandoleer and matching earrings which I posted a week or so ago, so have a look at them, I was very pleased with how they turned out.

We did buy a orange wig from a great fancy dress shop in Norwich Top Hat Fancy Dress and then there was the hat. Oh, the hat.

I think the hat deserves a post of it’s own, so watch this space.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed making it.

Shelley

2 thoughts on “The Mad Hatter Costume

  1. Love the blog. Make a mad hatter costume with thrift store treasures and am now tweaking it for comicon 2015. Thanks for writing it

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