Mother Nature's Daughter Costume

What sparked the idea of this unique costume was a simple paper rose that I had made. Seeing the beautiful texture and shape made me think of a young girl with a rose skirt (that was blooming, which signified good health). The idea flourished from there: for the "stem" beneath the flower, I saw green bloomers, and then a thin brown branch wrapped around her body, to her neck. Since this would be a nature sort of character, I seen on fit to have leaves covering her bosoms and leaves decorating around her body! And then I thought about the name, and the first thing that came to mind was Mother Nature's… Daughter! I know! Very unique, right!?

This outfit is by all my first most original costume that I've ever made. So, it was a HUGE challenge. I first made templates for the 13 different petal roses (all unique shaped), and used a Simplicity pattern for the bloomers and an Leotard pattern for the "nude" leotard bodysuit. For the bloomers, I used the 'wrong side' of "Shington" material fabric since it gave that more natural green texture and color, used skin color "Lycra Mesh" material for the leotard.

For the petals, I chose red satin taffeta and shaped them with buckram (interfacing) inside each petal. I put wire called Galvanized Wire (that’s a little stronger than wire hangers) in each of them to help make them stand and stay in place. The petals was attached to a mini skirt I made out of very stiff "black board" fabric and sewn on. This was the most difficult part of my costume! I broke through a couple of machine needles and went through SO MANY pins (just to hold in place as I sewn) to get them attached onto the skirt, and achieved victory! The petals were sewn on in layers, starting from the top; 1st row 2 petals, 2nd row 3 petals, 3rd row 4 petals and 4th row 4 petals , with each windowing each other. And then I had to bend them to shape like a blooming rose.

To get in and out of the skirt, I put a zipper in the back and added Velcro. I digitized my leaves on a special embroidery program and embroidered each leaf on my friend's embroider machine. That took 3 days to make about 105 different size leaves. I cut them out (took a good day and a half to cut them ALL out with breaks), and then sprayed them with "Stiffen Quik" spray to shape them to my desires. While those dried, I worked on my branches. I chose brown pleather fabric that had a branch-looking print on them and freehand the shape of branches before cutting. I used regular brown fabric that closes matched the pleather and sewn them together, and then lightly stuffed then with cotton. My branch was finished!

For the bust area, I attached one of my bras to the body suit and sewn the leaves onto the body suit. I also had a green flower ornament given to me from a friend and sewn that onto the middle of the leaf bra. I had to wrap and sewn to get it to stay in place. I also added leaves at the bottom of the bloomers. And for the branches to stay in place, I sewn on snaps.

I made the Leaf hair piece out of Stem wire and stem tape totally out of scratch, and hand sewn the leaves onto the hair piece. I attached green ribbons to be able to tie the hair piece onto on head comfortably.

It took me countless of hours to complete. I started this project on September 19, 2013 and completed it ON October 31, 2013 (I kept record of what I did in my notebook and took pictures of my progress). To finish this look, I curled up my hair and hair spray painted it to give that natural color for the costume. I also sprayed glitter body spray on myself and my costume to sparkle it up!

This was a VERY challenging project and it turned out the way I wanted it to. The impression of people face was beyond words. Some couldn't stop staring at me, and I received a lot of complements on my outfit. I even was asked to model in this outfit! When I told people that I made this all by myself, they were shocked. I didn't move around much since everyone wanted a picture of me! I'm glad that this came out beautifully and I'm happy to have lost pins and needles to get this completed!