Medusa Halloween Costume DIY

It's been so long since I've posted!  In preparation for another Halloween, I figured I'd finally get to posting about last year's Halloween costume!  Last year we found ourselves at another Halloween, another year of scrambling to find a cute couples costume.  Again, Andrew and I found ourselves wandering the aisles of Halloween stores, glaring at the expensive, but cheaply made costumes everywhere.  We ended up settling on Medusa and Perseus (he defeats Medusa by holding up a mirror shield so that he can't turn into stone).  However, we only bought a sword and hat for him and a light up snake headband for me.  Activate DIY sewing powers!!!!

Medusa in mythology

Looking at most medusa costumes online, it looks like medusa is some Grecian goddess with snakes on her head. But, if you're true to Greek mythology, she's actually half snake, so I went with that inspiration, channeling my inner Heidi Klum (Heidi Klum is basically the queen of Halloween and goes full out, favoring detail over sexiness).

Heidi Klum, Halloween extraordinaire

I started with the sketches below:

Joann fabrics was having a sale on Halloween fabrics, so I got this fabulous green shiny scales fabric and gold felt for less than $15!!!! Nothing I like better than a good bargain 💸💸. I started with the bodice by measuring the circumference of my body and cutting the fabric, eyeballing it so that it roughly followed the image above.

Next, I sewed the edges together to make a tube dress of sorts, adjusting and tightening so that it wouldn't fall down.  Pro tip: everyone's bodies are different, so it's better to start looser and tighten as you go. If you start tighter, it will be much harder to adjust.

Next was the neckpiece! After cutting the triangular pattern and doing a rough sanity test to make sure it fit around my neck, I hemmed the edges and sewed in Velcro around the ends.

Finally, for the tail, I sewed on an extra piece of elastic as a wristband to the pointy end of the dress.  The elastic went around my wrist and the gold cuffs from my Wonder Woman costume went over it.

And ta-dah, the finished product!! Don't stare for too long or else you'll turn into stone ;)