Sew What?! It's Just the Gypsy in My Soul

It has been well established that my Halloween costumes must be little more than glorified pajamas.  I wholeheartedly approve of entirely-over-the-top, full-scale, costume productions...for other people.  Mile-high hair, crazy make-up, props, functioning electronics, and masks that make sight a total impossibility, all melt my Halloween-loving heart.  But as someone who has made quite a habit of sitting comfortably, entering and exiting cars without major incident, walking at a brisk pace (sweating as a result), and seeing where I am going, I require something ridiculously simple, something elasticized, something in which I can hide my lumps, my bumps, AND all of the candy I sneak from the candy bowl.  These are the exact reasons I so love the forgiving Halloween costumes of the Art Deco era.

Not so much a costume as a dunce cap and a crepe-paper smock, one is
rarely able to discern exactly what the wearer intended to be.  But darn
him if he doesn't look festive!

I love that whatever the intention, the costume is usually fabricated in the classic Halloween color story of orange, black, and white.  I also love that from fairy princess to wizard to Juliet, practically everyone gets the Jack-O-Lantern treatment.

Finding inspiration in old patterns and illustrations from The Dennison's 
Bogie Book, and knowing that our Halloween plans include a perennially-
awesome, vintage Halloween party, I decided that this year I would be a gypsy.

Not having gone as a gypsy vagabond since the year my mom declared that the same costume I'd worn for the past two years (first as "pirate" and then as "artist") would work equally well as gypsy, I figured that this was my year to take back ownership of the costume.  This year I will be the Halloween gypsy I've always wanted to be - not the humiliating "pirartsy" that was so cruelly forced on me for three years in a row.

You see?  I'm clearly NOT a pirate.
(That's a gypsy earring)

That's right...no pirates here!

I'm almost positive that the pirate code strictly forbids trimmings
that are even slightly "pom pom" in nature and clearly the vest is
just dripping with those gypsy-esque danglers. 

Sticking with Halloween's tried-and-true colors, I made balloon-legged pants in black and a tassel-trimmed sash and head scarf in an orange-and-black stripe.  I had every intention of making my own gypsy tunic but realized how much easier it would be to customize an underutilized, white, dress shirt by hacking off the lower half of the sleeves and attaching gathered puff sleeves, but not without incident...

Sewing for the better part of two decades without injury, I always wondered
how those "I sewed through my finger" dummies managed to do it.  Well,
this costume taught me how.  Fortunately, my finger and hand remain intact
and the injury necessitated nary a pirate hook. 

As I was removing the shirt from beneath the presser foot, my own foot slipped, hitting the pedal and sending the needle right through my finger.  Reacting to my ouch response more quickly than I could understand what had happened, I immediately yanked my hand away.  In doing so, I broke the needle off into my finger - all in a day's work for a gypsy.

I convalesced by painting a non-pirate, gypsy-inspired pumpkin patch (get it?)
for the back of the vest, paying tribute to the costumes of yore and matching
my Crazy Crafty, Jack-O-Lantern, lantern staff.

What me, pirate?
Now that I'm fully recovered, I'm feeling quite fancy free and have a
desperate urge to wander.  Perhaps, it's just "The Gypsy in My Soul."

"The Gypsy in My Soul" - Perry Como

After much (gypsy) soul searching to the mellow crooning of Mr. Como, I suppose I am willing to concede that pirates are basically just scurvy-ridden water gypsies, so I guess my mom wasn't so far off-base...  

I hope you're ready for Halloween, because it is right around the corner!  What will you be on October 31?

Cheers!

Mr. Tiny

Crazy Crafty: You Don't Know JACK-O-Lantern!

As I age, I fear that I am regressing emotionally.  Holidays about food and family and wholesome activities become of less consequence to me as I yearn for the zany indulgence of Autumn's favorite gimme-gimme holiday.  In stark contrast to the traditional holidays, Halloween requires no heavy meals, no gift exchanges, and no forced marches to awkward family gatherings.  It is one night to live with abandon - dressing up, misbehaving, and bingeing on loads of candy without the typical, withering, do-you-really-think-you-need-that glances from those holier-than-thou grocery store cashiers.

As I consider the importance of Halloween in my life, I am forced to truly ponder what Halloween means to me.  As a Halloween romantic, I discovered that all of my love for the day stems more from my belief of what Halloween ought to be rather than what Halloween actually is.  Captured so beautifully by the images in the Dennison's Bogie Books, Halloween should be one big, spooky, Cole Porter musical with Jack-O-Lantern footlights and costumes reminiscent of Erté!

Scepter, wand, cane, crook, staff - a recurring element in many Deco-era
Halloween costumes was one kind or another of stick.  Impressed by the
pumpkin scepter of Little Bo Creep (center), I decided to see if I could
DIM, do it myself.

I started with a seven-foot-long bamboo pole and a twelve-inch, orange paper
lantern, both found at my favorite craft supply emporium - the dollar store!
With a budget totaling two dollars plus tax, this was a provident beginning!

I had the materials, now I just needed a face.  I took to the internet and reference books but was having difficulty deciding on a pumpkin face that I loved well enough to commit to dollar-store lantern.  This was to be a huge decision; once the paint was on, there would be no turning back!  I had considered adapting one of those leering faces found on vintage, German, papier-maché candy containers, but after flipping through one of my favorite Halloween resources, Halloween in America, I knew I had found my face!

I couldn't get beyond the lovable Jack-O-Lantern face of
this Dennison's crepe-paper Halloween apron, dated 1918.
(Source)

I embraced ( and thanks to my unsteady hands, perhaps even magnified)
the loose quality of the inspiration art.  It would be pretentious of this
seriously-untrained "artist" to label my work as "mixed media" when all
I did was sketch on the face with a #2 pencil and fill it in with whatever
I could find around the house, including paint (undiluted yellow
watercolor from a tube of unknown origin and nearly-expired, crusty,
black acrylic from high school art class) and a black sharpie.

With better light and less chance of overspray, I do all of my spray painting in the front yard; given the kind of wacky tacky crafting I am wont to do (see: Pickles the Pink Piggy Purse), I spend quite a bit of time painting in the front yard.  If my neighbors had a questionable opinion of me before, they must have serious concerns over my mental capacity after watching me play a one-man game of ring-around-the-rosie, applying several coats of glossy, black spray paint to a seven-foot pole stuck in the ground.

 

Even I had to question my sanity when I went into the wacky tacky
costume archives and couldn't find the cape I wanted...because there
were too many homemade capes in the way!!!

I tried riding a broom but it wouldn't hold me...

I may perform a few minor tweaks/additions before All Hallow's Eve but for a two-dollar investment, I think I did pretty well!

Lit from within by battery-operated lights that I had on-hand, it has sort
of an eerie, reverse Jack-O-Lantern effect...but I still like it.

Of course, after my craft was completed, my next trip to the dollar store
was met with row after row of battery-operated, jack-o-lantern style,
paper lanterns.  Nevertheless, I am happy with the chance to get into
the Halloween spirit with some custom Crazy Crafty!!!  

Yes, Mr. Tiny's Halloween threads will be built in stylistic conjunction with his Jack-O-Lantern walking stick, but you'll just have to wait until the day draws nearer before the entire costume is revealed.  How about you?  Are you gearing up for the Halloween season?  Are you feeling crafty?  Do you have a great idea for your costume?  Whatever you decide to be this October 31, remember that it's Halloween...

LET'S MISBEHAVE!!!

"Let's Misbehave" as performed by Irving Aaronson

Written by Cole Porter

Cheers!

Mr. Tiny

Sew What?! Like A Bat Out of Hall-oween 1929

Before I talk about our Halloween, or the costumes I made, or the fun that we had, I have to do a little bit of bragging about how disturbingly cute my nephew is!  Can he really be related to me?  I question his genetic make-up because nobody, but nobody, has ever accused me of being cute and then this guy comes along and ZOWEE - off the cuteness charts!!!  That's not an exaggeration; we took him to the doctor and found out that he was in the 99th percentile for height in 2 year olds but they said his cuteness is unquantifiable.  They actually referred my sister and brother-in-law to a crisis counselor because they said he was at dangerous risk levels for developing an "acute cuteness complex" at any moment.  If I was super hip, I would "hash tag" this - #cutepeopleproblems.  I, as you are undoubtedly well aware, am woefully, tragically, painfully unhip.

"Reach for the sky!"
He was actually trying to smile in this one.

Aren't I lucky?!!
I get to hang out with this mug on a regular basis
and give him cool, vintage cowboy stuff.
But he did have to take off his boot...
there was a snake in it.

This one reminded me of a Disney cartoon - if you
can believe it.  Have you ever seen...

"A Cowboy Needs a Horse" (1956) ???
Watch it!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming (but really cute though, right?)

Particular attention has been paid to Dennison's Bogie Book this Halloween season.  I guess we bloggers are following the same spiritual vibrations because the costumes I made this year are directly inspired by the beautiful, deco-era illustrations found within those books.

That's my kind of Halloween party!

I've always found the Halloween costumes of the 1920's and 30's to be exciting.  Instead of blood and gore, the costumes make it seem like every Halloween is a Cole Porter musical.  It's not only the costumes, but the decorations, the games, and even the ephemera. Papier-mache pumpkins, die-cut witches, lanterns, funny hats, cider, anything spooky from as early as the Victorian era through the 1930's - that's what Halloween means to me.  Blessedly, our friends, Kevin & Jody, feel the same. 

Kevin & Jody's place
A spooky old tree and a Victorian house being slowly
enveloped by a thick, green fog.

I love this chandelier!!!
It drips with lanterns, masks, ornaments, and mementos of Halloweens past.

Yes, to all of the above!

Amazing house. Check.  Amazing hosts. Check.  Player piano, cool party guests, good food.  Check, check, check.  The only thing left was the costumes. Oh yeah, I also made some costumes.  Check.

I found a really nice, very inexpensive crepe georgette at
my favorite/secret, out of the way fabric store and used it to style a
 late-20's dress.  There are drapes of
fabric at the front, the back, and the side seams and a swagged
garland of self-fabric yo-yos at the dropped waist.

Like a good bridesmaid dress, I wanted Mary's Bat/Vamp costume
 to be something she could wear again.  Bat wings at Christmas?
Bat wings at Easter?  Bat wings on Boxing Day (Canada)?  That works.

The inspiration for this costume was, of course, the central figure.
I know crepe paper used to be made of heartier stuff, but I wonder if a
dress and headdress made entirely of crepe paper (as the instructions
 suggest) would survive a full-night of Halloween merrymaking.

Mary's hat is made of a deconstructed wall-hanging, bat decoration( from the 99cents Only Store),
a deconstructed pirate hat (thrifted), and deconstructed, black tinsel spiders (Target dollar section).
I'm telling you that hat was broken down!
All told, Mary's hat cost three dollars...
if you don't count the gas used driving from store to store to store!

Based on the Dennison's illustrations, I made
"carnival cane" type walking sticks/scepters;
Mary's had glittering bats.

I guess I had more inspiration that may have been subconscious;
several people told Mary that she looked like an Edward Gorey illustration.
My parents were ardent fans of PBS' "Mystery" series. Growing up
I saw the opening sequence about 475,692 times (reruns included).

The Edward Gorey opening theme from
the PBS series "Mystery" (a parental favorite)

See the bat lady at 0:21-0:25

My costume was a little less macabre than Mary's, but it wasn't all comic (see the tear drop on my mask?).  Speaking of the mask, I just realized that I'm always wearing some kind of face furniture.  Because I don't wear contacts, I just went blind all night.  I have particularly horrible night vision so I spent the entire evening squinting and tripping because my depth perception was off - the ideal party guest.  I'm going to have to include the necessity of glasses to my personal list of hard and fast costume rules - no face paint (messy, greasy, and easily smeared) and nothing more restrictive or less comfortable than pajamas.  If you look at the old-timey ilustrations, with the exception of the giant spiderweb, all the costumes look extremely wearable.  Let it be known that I love all those clever costumes thoughtfully created with moving parts, giant masks, added appendages, etc.  For me, however, comfort and the ability to sit, stand, and move is paramount.

A bit clown, a bit choir robe, a bit Mama Cass on
the "Mike Douglas Show" - all comfortable.
I prefer to think of it as male maternity wear.

My post-pasta pigout Pagliacci costume was
 topped with a diminutive, handcrafted hat. 

The costume started with my yo-yo clown.
Oddly enough, my brother and his girlfriend thought
this was super creepy.  The two-year-old buckaroo,
however, thought it was hilarious.

I very crudely embroidered the face on some remnant muslin
and stuffed the head/hat with batting that I snuck from a pillow.
Each arm and leg is made up of THIRTEEN yo-yos!!! Spooooky!!!

"Every party needs a pooper..."
Sad clowns

Kevin said this photo of us looked like something from Vanity Fair.
We just wanted to be close to the snack table...
(photo courtesy of Kevin Kidney)

I've already bragged about my nephew so I don't want to boast even further, but with the exception of missing a few parties that I know were awesome, this was a pretty perfect Halloween.  It was the ultimate haunted house experience!

"The Haunted House" - Ray Noble & The New Mayfair Orchestra (1931)

I hope you groovy boos and ghouls had an awesome Halloween too.  Honestly, we spent half of our night planning and preparing for next year's festivities.  When I was young I liked Halloween, but the older I get, the more I LOVE Halloween!   Thanksgiving, Christmas - those are a lot of work; Halloween is pure fun - just a little responsibility and a whole lot of candy!!!

Bonus photo: I made a sweet pumpkin dip (served with ginger cookies)

to take with us to the party.  Like all good things, this recipe contains Cool-Whip

and I used that container to store the dip.  When I removed the lid, there

 was a Jack-O-Lantern staring back at me.  A Halloween miracle?

I think so. You see it too, don't you?

Cheers!

Mr. Tiny