for Halloween this year I decided to be polychrome from the 4th wizard of oz book, “the road to oz”. this as my sister likes to point out to me is a bit on the obscure side, but there is a reason I chose this particular character.
but before I get into that long story I will give a quick overview of making the costume.
the shirt I used a vintage Vogue pattern #1189. I have had the rainbow fabric for years, someone gave it to me, and I have had it so long I contemplated getting rid of it, but then this costume idea came up, which is why its so hard to get rid of fabric, because eventually I will need it one day, even if it take ten years.
this pattern was actually easier then I anticipated. I don't generally sew with vogue patterns and they have a reputation for being complicated but this went together easily enough. the hardest part of the whole thing was cutting out the sequin fabric it made a huge mess, but then I knew it would. my floor was covered with them. I tried at first to serge the edges but all that did was cause three broken needles so I gave up on that idea. I should have given up on that with the first broken needle, but hey I can be stubborn sometimes. I decided though I couldn't afford to lose anymore, as I only had one more needle left for my serger, which reminds me I need to get some more needles.
the top zips in the back so I did a lapped zipper, which went in really easy. I was afraid the fabric would stretch as I sewed it but it didn't. everything about the shirt was pretty straight forward. though I did have to re-sew a few of the sequins as they were put on with a chain stitch, and after sitting for years and years some of it had started to unravel.
the skirt was an adventure in itself. it was not exactly what I wanted to do, but I ran into some trouble finding rainbow fabric. which I don’t get since I was shopping during prime Halloween costume making time. I wanted to do more of a circle skirt or a simple gather skirt. I just wanted something easy, so onto Joanns website I go, and search for rainbow fabric, and they have nothing! well they had stuff, they had it listed but everything was "in store pick up only". not a problem I have three stores within an hour or so drive but I did want to be sure they had it before I went because I don’t want to drive that far and then they don't have it. so I check my stores and none of them have it, so I expand the search to within 100 miles and no store within 100 miles has a rainbow fabric and I am not going to drive hundreds of miles for this costume. by the time I discover this though I needed to go to bed and decided I would look around online after I got off the next day I really would rather buy fabric in person I like to touch it and feel the drape, but in a situation such as this I can make an exception if I have too.
on my way home the next day I stopped at a dollar store, (not for fabric) and they had these little kid dress up skirts. I think they were for dressing up like a mermaid? not really how that works for a mermaid, but it's what the packaging said. they were cute fluffy little things but only 10 inches long. which is way short, but they were only $1 a piece so I bought out the store! I bought 10 in all, which really is all they had. the skirts were double layer so I figured I could take them apart and sew them long ways together, then gather at the waist. I think it worked out pretty well, each piece was 54 inches long so I had plenty of length, and I added a different color ribbon to each of the 14 seams, to make it look like I meant to just piece this together the whole time.
I think it worked out pretty well, even for having to re-design the entire thing.
now onto the why I chose this costume.
last year I decided I was going to read all the oz books by L. Frank Baum, and just his,I don;t think I could read all the oz books ever there are just too many. I have not read all the Baum books yet yet, but I am going through them slowly. I am currently reading the fifth one. I like to put some books in between long series though so I don’t bored of them, it will probably take me a while to get through them all.
as I was reading the forth book and came across the character Polychrome it made me laugh. “Polly” as they call her in the book is the rainbows daughter. I think its pretty cool the rainbow has a daughter Actually he has several daughters but Polly is the only one that made it to being a main character. she’s a bit annoying, a little bit on the ditzy side and she dances to keep warm, those are not the things that attracted me to her character though, no what gave me the idea I had to be her was the fact she fell off the rainbow. in the book she is dancing on the edge of the rainbow when bam! she falls to the earth, and her father, not paying any attention to her picks up the rainbow and Poly becomes a poor lost little girl whom Dorothy runs into and agrees to help poly find her way home.
now I am in no exuberant dancing kind of person. however I did once fall off a rainbow.
when I was a child our local park had one of the best play structures I have seen in my life. they had four different wooden buildings that were like forts. they each had two levels to them with platforms and a firehouse pole to slide down. two of them were connected by a bridge that was about 18 inches wide and four feet off the ground. another one had a small slide. there were also swing sets and an awesome 12 foot slide that was open, as in it only had sides that came up about three inches. and there was also a wooden arch that had metal rungs on either side of it for climbing, the very top of the arch was over six feet high, and everyone called this the rainbow.
there were different ways to play on this rainbow and varying views on how it should be played on. one could either climb on the rungs to make ones way over the rainbow, or you could use them like monkey bars and try to make your way over that way. the monkey bar thing though was very difficult and ultimately kids reverted to the climbing over the rainbow.
my mother didn’t like the rainbow for obvious reasons it was dangerous, and I was not allowed to go all the way over till I was bigger. I enviously watched my older siblings playing on the rainbow while never going farther up then the forth rung. till one day I convinced my mother I was big enough and ready to climb over the entire thing... yeah, I wasn’t.
there was a trick to making it over the rainbow, and that trick was knowing where to turn around at exactly the top of the arch so you would go over the other side feet first. I had seen many a child do just this trick, but I misjudged the middle and went to far, which sent me sliding head first down the rainbow. I tried hard as I could to grab on to the bars on either side of me, but I was just going too fast. I face planted at the bottom and was rewarded with a mouthful of dirt. I had so much dirt in my mouth my mother was convinced I had knocked my teeth out. but no they were fine. I was fine, a bit shaken but fine, and banned from going over the rainbow again. this banishment lasted until I was a teenager, actually my mother probably would have let me try again when I was around 10 or so but I was petrified of the thing, so I never asked. the summer I was sixteen or seventeen my cousin, sister and I went to the park one Sunday to do some pictures for our “band”. my cousin wanted to do some pictures on the rainbow and I was like umm.... ok.... but that day was Amazing! because that was the day I faced a fear and beat it. I went over the rainbow,I climbed to the top and turned around and climbed back down the other side feet first no face planting this time, just sucsess!
here I am on top of the rainbow with my cousin. and the weird thing is shortly after I tackled the rainbow they tore it down. they took away everything in that park because it was too dangerous, because it had too much of a potential for children to get hurt. because kids like me face planted off the rainbow. but I was glad I made it over the rainbow
