Yes You Can Costumes

Making the Extraordinary from the Ordinary

Family Wizard of Oz Costumes – DIY Glinda Dress

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Waiting for sequins and glue to dry!

I got my crafty on with this Glinda costume and I had a blast. I usually struggle to find the time just to finish an outfit and often have to ditch most of my plans for embellishing it. Not this time! Herein lies the beauty in altering existing garments rather than starting from scratch.

My Mother-in-Law, Karen, found this sweet, pink dress at a Seattle consignment shop, several months before I even started working on our costumes. She recognized its Glinda potential, and I saw it, too! All it needed were some sleeves, spangles, a crown and a wand to complete the look. I wish I’d thought to take a picture of it before I added a sleeve, but here you can see the dress in the middle of transition.

I found the perfect , sheer, pink, glitter fabric for the perfect price of $3.00 for 1 1/2 yards at my favorite thrift store! Now I could start adding to the dress.

Altering this dress was so much fun! First, I cut out the sleeves pattern from Simplicity pattern 4139. Side note: (Patterns are not cheap unless you watch for when JoAnn has a super sale on them. I always feel like it’s my birthday when they run the occasional 5 for $5 sale on their Simplicity patterns! This is when you stock up, my friends. If you have the shelf space, this is your best strategy for being prepared for whenever the creative mood strikes. If you never use the pattern, you can always gift it to another costumer or try to make a little money by selling it on eBay or Etsy. You may make a few bucks, especially if the pattern is out of print by the time you sell it. There may be someone out there who is THRILLED to find it! That person may be me.)

Anyway…What were we talking about? Oh, yeah. Sleeves. Emma is six, but I cut the sleeve fabric on the size 8 line of the pattern to make them as large and poofy as possible. Next, I followed the pattern’s directions for assembling the sleeves. Then, I pinned them to the armscye (Pronunciation: “arm’s-eye”. Definition: Fancy term for arm-hole that you can use when you want to impress your friends and colleagues). Some people say that it’s risky to Frankenstein sleeves from one pattern onto an armscye for which it wasn’t specifically designed. Don’t listen to those people. Or at least not when it comes to a gathered sleeve. All you have to do is adjust the gathers to fit the armscye and sew that sucker in! In this case, I hand-sewed the sleeve in, catching the sleeve to the dress lining, because the armhole of the dress was already finished. Sewing the sleeve in the standard way would have either created a lot of bulk or it would have showed machine stitching. Hand sewing took a little extra time, but the finished result was prettier.

I tried the dress on Emma and marked where I wanted to hem the sleeve. After I sewed the hem, I stitched some silver, holographic sequin trim around the edge for some extra “bling”.

At this point, I decided that I wanted to add a sparkly sash to the dress, as well. I had some extra, super stiff interfacing leftover from making the crown. I folded it in half and cut a piece that would be as wide as the front of the dress once it was opened up. The top of the piece was straight and I cut the bottom of the piece into a point. This would be a simple way to create the look of a pointed bodice, since the movie costume has a pointed bodice. I didn’t have any pink fabric to cover the interfacing, but I did have a spool of wide, pink, satin ribbon. I sewed strips of the ribbon to cover the interfacing. Then, I sewed a piece of the pink sparkle fabric over that. I stitched sequin trim along the bottom edge and attached lengths of the pink ribbon on each side for the sashes.

Then, I blinged out the sash with sequins and rhinestones. In hindsight, I would have sewn on the sequins if I had more time. A bunch of them fell off during the course of Halloween evening and afterward. However, it was quick and easy to attach them with craft glue at the time!

At the very last minute, I decided to glue some rhinestones to the skirt of the dress, as well. Voila! Sparkles galore!

I found these amazing heels in the perfect shade of glitter pink at the YWCA thrift store. They were $2.99! My mother-in-law loaned us a magic wand. Our “Good Witch” was all ready after I made her a matching Glinda crown to complete her ensemble.

Glinda Dress Supply List

Glinda Sash Supply List

Complete the Look