…getting a Brazilian…

Olá!

Soooo, I mentioned my brother’s BIG birthday? well to go with it he had a BIG birthday bash! with a Brazilian theme.  I stupidly procrastinated about my costume, ended up going shopping for fabric the day before the party and had to cut n’ sew like a madman to get it done on time. #sewingmachineonfullblast

I’d first googled “Brazilian women” and what came up was nothing but women in bikinis.  NO.  Even if this were the very height of summer… still no.  So then I googled Brazil women’s national costume, and oh yes, that’s more like it!

These lovely ladies are wearing the traditional dress for Bahian women, and I thought the white lace and broderie anglaise tops and headscarves and full, brightly coloured skirts so very lovely.  So I set about making something like that…

For simple yet voluminous skirt that you can whip up quickly, you can’t go past a circle skirt… I bought 4m of red polyester taffeta from the $4 table at Spotlight… it is very stiff and very silk dupion like and I knew it would stick out nicely with a good amount of volume.  I cut out my circle skirt and divided the remainder to make a waist sash and a scarf for part of my headgear.  The skirt is a full 2m in diameter, and I thought about making it rush rush rush but nah. I just can’t do that sort of thing, even in a costume.  So it’s got a proper interfaced waistband, and closes with an invisible zip and a press stud in the waistband.  Hehe, while I was making my costume, Tim sent around a snapchat re it being National Doughnut Day, and I was like HA!  I’m fitting right in!  This is MY kind of doughnut!!

Oh, I have a little tip!  I usually hand-slipstich the ends of my invisible zips to the seam allowance with a few quick stitches, but lately I’ve taken to just doing a few quick back-and-forths on the sewing machine.  It’s so much quicker since you’re not having to thread a needle, and actually more stable too.

Speaking of rush rush, I admit I did not hem that giant circle skirt… it’s just overlocked along the edge there!  I figure that if/when I ever decide to wear it “for realz” then I’ll go to the effort and hem it properly.  Probably seems funny that I did the waistband properly when it’s not even “seen” in my costume, whereas the hem, which is fully visible, I didn’t finish properly… but you know, some things are easy to re-do later and some are not.  The waistband is the kind of a thing you’ve got to do it right the first time.

The blouse is made from an old lace curtain that was originally had hanging in an upstairs window… I took it down when we re-did our floors up there and have just never hung it up again! Lazy? the view was too nice? Both really  😉   A bit off one end was sacrificed for my top, hehehe.  I had also bought a length of white cotton/linen for the lining, there’s quite a few bolts of this in Spotlight at the mo’ selling for very cheap; I’ve actually bought quite a lot of it lately, for other projects yet to appear here…

My pattern is very loosely the epaulette top from She Has a Mannish style, cut to flare out more in the body and sleeves…  the lining is cut straighter in the sides.  The shell and lining have separate side seams, but are sewn together at the shoulders and armscye.  I pinned and stitched a square neckline, cut and overlocked the edge, and then stitched a length of white cotton bobbin lace around to edge it, part of a large stash that I’ve had for many, many (many, many) years.  It’s funny, I kind of threw this together just for the costume, but you know what?? I actually love it and will definitely be wearing this again, in real life!
Waist sash:  22cm x 3.8m, I wrapped it twice around my waist and finished off with a giant pouffy bow.  Head scarf:  30cm x 2.4m of white,  21cm x 2.3m of the red;  I’d cut the white wider to be the main colour with the red to be more of an accent, like how the Bahian ladies that had popped up in my google search have their headscarves.  I’d also googled “how to tie a Brazilian head scarf” and found this video which was sooooorta helpful, I kind of based mine off her first example… but my scarf is much much longer and I obviously tied and tucked and folded extra knots in mine so as to be a much higher and more complicated affair… I’d also made two “ropes” of the white and red and twisted them to tie around my headscarf to help keep it in place.

after this photo, I redid my headscarf and I think it was a lot better the second time!  but didn’t have enough time to take another pic 🙁

For footwear, I’d noticed that the ladies tend to wear low, flat, open sandals; very comfortable things like birkenstocks but not anything specific.  I got out a few of my sandals, and Mum voted for my little white sandals, that I made last summer.  I danced the night away in these things, and they’re still holding up great!

So that’s it!  We had a blast… I wish I could show you a picture of my son Tim, who went as Gisele Bündchen in a blonde wig, bikini top, boy leg shorts and full on wings a la Victoria’s Secret.   And clonking boots on his feet.  It was hilarious.  Absolutely he was the belle of the ball!

just use your imagination…

Another funny little moment of the evening’s preparations… Craig used this picture as his costume inspiration… we’d bought red, blue, green and yellow feather boas from Spotlight to customise the black pants and black shirt that he already had in his wardrobe.. we also bought yellow satin for a sash and a yellow velour fedora from Spotlight too…

Well, he’d cut and tied together lengths of the feather boas to make the leg and arm bands… and there was like masses of feather fluff and debris all over the floor.  So he’d got out the vacuum cleaner to do a quick tidy up.  Well, he was vacuuming quite perilously close to the little pile of carefully tied together feather boa bands… and I was literally just about to say “you might want to move those feather things” when FWOOOOOOOP! this quite long string of feather boas just disappeared! right up the vacuum cleaner in a flash!!  Like, literally a split second and they were gone, like a garishly coloured, feathery snake zooming at top speed into a burrow, …  well, Kelly and I burst out laughing and just couldn’t stop, haven’t seen anything so funny in aaaages!  Panic!  Don’t worry, we opened up the vacuum cleaner and rescued the furry beast from its lair, I mean, the feather boa, fortunately none the worse for wear.

SO much fun.  EEEEE, I LOVE costume parties!!