Pregnant Halloween: Melisandre from Game of Thrones

I helped with the school haunted house this year and that made me excited about making a costume. 

In late September, I googled pregnant Halloween costumes and they were the WORST. No offense to you if you have done any of the following, but they are terrible: painting your stomach like a basketball, watermelon or pumpkin; wearing black and painting a baby skeleton on your stomach; gluing doll arms to your stomach like your baby is a zombie; etc etc etc.

Bleh. So then I was thinking about Game of Thrones/ASOIAF characters and how many Daenerys and Cersei costumes I had already seen online. That made me think of Melisandre, the red witch/priestess of R'hollor. I don't particularly like her character that much, but I thought it would be easy to make and she even is "pregnant" at one point with the Shadow Baby that then goes and kills Renly. Perfect!

I used this vintage pattern, Simplicity 5967. It is for a bust 38 which is still laughably big, so I made it as is and then just made crazy alterations as I went. 

 Pictures of Melisandre from the show: here.

She always has her red jewel necklace on, so I made one out of craft rhinestones and fake gold leather- plus my trusty old hot glue gun, which I accidentally left plugged in OVERNIGHT and it somehow did not burn down the house!

Crafty!

 I bought a long, curly red wig online. It unfortunately had bangs, but what can you do? It was at least closer to burgundy or maroon than Ronald McDonald red. It was surprisingly not itchy or that hot.

Andrew did not think it was funny to call our baby "my shadow baby" LOL

 I made the dress out of dark red, cheap polyester knit from JoAnn that was also on sale. I changed the sleeves to be full length and bell out at the ends. I wore it with my cheap red flats from Target, et voila, my costume!

 I ended up taking in the side seams a ton, the shoulder seams, trimming the sleeve heads and shortening the skirt. It is pretty shoddily made, but it's a Halloween costume!!!

I wore it for the two days of the haunted house at school and it was fun. People liked it and it was both comfortable and warm. Sadly I did not wear it on Halloween itself because Chicago decided to be freezing cold, rainy, snow intermittently (!!!!) and have a high wind advisory. The weather was absolutely miserable and there were hardly any Trick or Treaters! Sad...

I will never use this pattern again because it was so big, so I think it will be part of the next giveaway!