Coolest Homemade Rainbow Brite Costume

I love Rainbow Brite as I suspect most 25-30 something girls do because she was a great cartoon when we were younger, so I decided to be her for Halloween 2010. I decided to make the Homemade Rainbow Brite Costume myself because none of the costumes I found online were good enough and I really wanted it to be authentic and one of a kind.

I’m an elementary art teacher, and recently purchased a sewing machine to use in my classroom, however, I have never made any clothing before this attempt. I got all the fabric from Jo-Ann Fabric (Fleece was 50% off) and brought a picture of Rainbow Brite with me so I would get the correct colors. The dress is a jumper pattern that I just purchased and made a little shorter than the pattern shows.

The shoes were the hardest part of the costume and definitely the most time consuming. I used platform flip flops as the base of the shoe (you really need to have a lot of pins so you can “pin” the fabric together before you sew). I cut the yellow fleece around the bottom of the shoe and attached the red fleece to it. I had to cut and pin the red fabric so that it would go around my ankle and the top of the shoe. The “rings” were the part that took the longest. I basically made little pillows that were sewn to go around my ankles, then I hand sewed the pillow together so it was a ring. Then after all of them were made, I hand sewed all of the rings together so they would just slip on. I also reinforced the stitching with a hot glue gun (this tool ended up being my best friend for the project).

For the sleeves, I started out with a white fabric base and cut out even strips of fabric going all the way down the arm cut to the right size as the arm gets smaller down to the wrist. Then when sewing them together, I would flip them on top of each other so that when I turned them the right side out, no seam would show. Then I attached them to the dress with Velcro so they can come off when it’s too hot.

All of the details are made with the left over fleece fabric and I made the bow myself with a clip and ribbon I bought at Jo-Ann also. This costume took me about 20+ hours of work to create (I was on Fall Break when I made it). I had a lot of pictures taken of me when out on the town that night. I absolutely loved wearing it and the fabric was perfect for a cold Colorado night.

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