Disneyland Haunted Mansion Stretching Portraits

Mousemeat and I are (finally!) making it to Mickey's Halloween Party at Disneyland this year. We thought about our costume options and more importantly our requirements - cheap, comfortable, preferably recognizable, and maybe Disney-related - and came up with a few possibilities. Then I mentioned that I was still wanting to do the tightrope walker stretching portrait from The Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland (which I vaguely started a few years ago but never really made any progress on). We thought about both doing the same costume, and about the different ghosts she could possibly be. Then we decided the dynamite barrel portrait would be great. Easy combination of make + buy, and a perfect excuse to make a tailcoat.



There's not much progress yet, and only on the tightrope walker at that. But it's something. For the tightrope walker, I'm using McCall's 3674 for the bodice, just because it's basically perfect as-is and I already have it. Everything else is being drafted. The dynamite barrel costume is being made from McCall's 6143 for the tailcoat (which, again, I already have so it's convenient), a bow-tie and altered tuxedo shirt I used for other costumes, Mousemeat's rockabilly Harley Quinn shoes, and the rest purchased pieces.

I already had some purple-y burgundy velveteen leftover from a school project I did years ago, and I tested the pattern with it and totally lucked out to have enough for both the bodice and cape.


The cape I drafted on my dress form using an old sheet. (Hint: If you're doing a muslin mockup, try using an old cotton sheet instead of real muslin. Even if you have to go out and get one from the thrift store, it's way cheaper outright and with more material leftover, and gives the same result.)

A lot of the work we've done so far is more about planning and undocumented trial and error, so there's not much to actually show yet. But something is better than nothing.

I've prepped the tuxedo shirt and cuffs for the dynamite portrait, and MouseMeat has been sewing red ribbon onto white boxers for the shorts. We also have some nice black suiting material and lining for the coat, which I'll hopefully be starting on next week. In the meantime, I made a mockup of my tightrope bodice and paired it with the skirt's lining to test it for length alterations. I'll probably add two inches or so to the side panels of the bodice and then taper the bottom edge to match it up with the length in front. Because the princess seams in the front are a little wonky, and I wanted to give some highlight and structure to the seams without doing piping, I decided I'll be sewing the bodice wrong sides together and doing all the seams as French seams.

I've got the sleeves for Tightrope mostly done (just waiting until the bodice is finished to work out the final adjustments). They're a layer of white eyelet trim over pink microfiber, flat lined with white cotton, and lined along the gathering sections with tulle. I'm hoping to have the bodice done today, but that depends on getting the skirts about half finished so I can see what skirt tulle I have leftover to use as interfacing in the bodice. So we'll see. The bows for the tops of the sleeves are done too. I decided to do double loops, and I was working with short pre-cut ribbon segments, so I stitched all the pieces together instead of just tying it.


The Dynamite tailcoat mock-up is done. The pattern is kind of a hot mess, but the alterations were sorted out pretty easily. Aside from taking everything in here and there, I'll be raising the bodice/tails seam to the waist, doing French princess seams in the back instead of darts, and adding pockets to the chest front (patch pockets in a pinch, or welt pockets time permitting).


(And dog was helping with the waistcoat.)

Late to the party, I KNOW!

Here are my shorts! Handsewing strips of ribbon to white boxers to save on cash? YES! I ran about 6" short of ribbon for the last stripe, so what I actually did (because I'm pretty lazy and don't wanna drive 15 miles one way just for a couple feet of ribbon) was move that middle right ribbon over to the edge so that the missing strip is in the middle. Since I'll be wearing a full tail coat, I didn't see it as an immediate priority, honestly. I also plan on replacing these bad boys with something a little more official (and cuter) once I have the spare cash on hand.

I just ordered my white canvas spats and some sock garters (to be painted purple) from Oldmillmercant on ebay and hope to get them by Friday! I'll take some photos as soon as they get in!

We ended up wearing something different to Disneyland for Halloween (Mad Hatter and March Hare, which went over really well) so these aren't done yet, but we are planning to keep working on (and updating) these. Slowly most likely since we're jumping into SDCC costumes now, but eventually.

I love your choices for the costumes...something different and not normally seen on this site. Keep up the good work and keep posting your progress on RPF!

dkaniel said:

I love your choices for the costumes...something different and not normally seen on this site. Keep up the good work and keep posting your progress on RPF!

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Thanks! It's been way too long since I've done anything with this, but I actually busted out some fabrics for these costumes today and washed them to prep for some sewing. Hopefully I'll make some significant progress over the next few months.