Cowgirl Reveal!

Ya'll, I DID IT! I made a costume! Of course, I had to wait until Lily Ruth was at Parent's Day Out so that I could finish it, so she's not here to model it yet... but I'm too excited to wait!

Here's how it went down:

I made patterns for the yoke and cuffs by tracing the outlines of the onesie directly onto parchment baking paper. Then I added 1/4" seam allowances all of the way around. For the cuffs, I also angled the edges so that they'll stand away from the sleeves.

I spent a while getting the design placed the way that I wanted it. It's a good thing that parchment paper and pencils (and erasers) are so compatible...

I 'bulked up' the yellow fabric for the yoke with heat-n-bond fusible interfacing, then I used a low iron to flatten my pattern onto the fabric. Now it was time to pin then cut out my yoke:

Then I cut notches into the seam allowance so that my edge would lie flat:

After a failed concept, 

- I have no idea what happened there or why I thought it would work. I ended up with 4 small pieces of completely unusable fabric :-/

I cut 2 yellow cuffs:

Then I decided to bulk up the cuffs with yellow crafting felt, so I cut some of that too:

Once I ironed down and stitched all of my edges, I added red puffy fabric paint to the edges:

Now it was time to add the detail to the yoke. I was stumped as to how I could match my painstakingly carefully drawn pattern... until I was struck by genius - I poked the entire line with a sewing pin, placed the pattern back onto the yoke, and followed my now-dotted line with a red marker (red in case any of it showed through the trim...):

It was a huge pain in the ass to hand-guide the trim along the line under my sewing machine foot, but it was totally worth it. I didn't have to hand-stitch the entire thing, AND it is securely attached.

Next, I used embroidery thread to tack cow print 'chaps' to her jeans:

For her belt, I used scrapbook specialty paper. I actually SEWED paper, ya'll. I cut 2 strips of suede-feel paper that were just under 2" wide (her belt loops are right at 1"). I connected the strips, used a low iron to turn both edges in, then sewed them down with red thread. I cut a cardboard oval, sewed 2 loops to the back and used a hot glue gun to cover it with gold paper - voila! belt:

Then is was just the tedious business of taking the yoke and cuffs to the onesie. I decided to go with snaps on the shoulders (I now hate snaps) and quick stitches at the bottom (corner points only) because I want to be able to detach this stuff after Halloween and use the onesie for the rest of winter. The cuffs are stitched with embroidery thread, and will come of easily... Oh, and I added white lacing to the awesome cowboy hat that our friends found for us... *need a minute to catch my breath* *WHEW!*

Enough talk - here it is!!!

Don't look too closely - it is far from perfect. Fabric paint is HARD, ya'll... but I love the way that it turned out :-) and my little cowgirl is pretty excited too...

I picked her up early from Parent's Day Out, and plopped her on the kitchen table to check it out. 'Is foe ME?!':

And approximately .05 seconds later 'I a COWGIRL! Ee-HAW!!!!':