Entry for the Dixie Stables winter 2010 costume contest + the 2010 Hinesville Christmas parade.

Yes! The parade! The barn was invited back last year (and did go), but I wasn’t quite back up to that level yet. This year, though? “Take Jens, you can totally manage it on him!” And I am never one to turn down not only a date with my favourite pony, but a costuming date at that.

We didn’t plan on an overall theme for the group, but being as Joey’s owner has a soldier-ish costume for her other horse (a Friesian – you know those big, black, furry-legged horses you see in every fantasy movie ever? Swoon), we decided on going as a Nutcracker and a Sugarplum Princess. Then the rest of the troupe joined in, so that we ended up with an elf, a ballerina, and a Random Winter Girl, who was actually wearing my Viking Woman outfit! My mother was able to get a brief clip on our way back to the staging area, which I’ve uploaded to YouTube – it wasn’t in a well-lit area, so it’s not great, but you can at least see my parade wave! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67iRuxOxHsQ

My costume is a mix of handmade and secondhand items. The corset and skirt are both made from “costume satin”, a thin synthetic fabric with high sheen and a smooth, almost silky feel. It looks pretty, but frays like mad. The corset was constructed from a “duct tape” pattern with four panels on each side, is boned with more of the plastic-coated wire, and bound in skirt-complementing purple bias tape. The skirt, in turn, uses a six-panel pattern that’s simply stitched up and zippered shut. Both the white turtleneck and the white leggings are Goodwill finds, with dollar store feather boa stitched to the turtleneck’s collar and cuffs. The ensemble has been given a little extra Christmas spirit by pinning holly leaf-topped bells (all in silver) to various points on the skirt. I’ve also got a dollar store party tiara, and there are thin purple ribbons clipped to my hair. The boots and gloves were already owned.

You’ll likely have noticed that Jens isn’t the horse in the barn-party shoot (though he is visible in the background!), nor is he wearing the horse half of the costume during the parade (he’s just got a tinsel wreath and more jingly bells) – that’s because it was made for the larger horse (Jens being needed for younger riders during the party), and we didn’t need Pony tripping over it all night! You have, however, seen the larger horse before, as that’s once again Winston (“Golden Avalanche”) the Saddlebred.

Winston’s half of the costume uses a pattern made by tracing the outline of a horse blanket onto brown paper. I cut a “shirt” from a secondhand jersey sheet and trimmed it with black scrap cloth and gold scroll braid (which I should have remembered from my battles with another long-ago red costume loves unravelling as much as costume satin loves to fray). The hat is an upturned styrofoam pot, covered in black broadcloth, edged with gold-painted scallop paper, and accented with more scroll braid. He was very chill about all of it, save for the brief moment the hat slipped down over one eye! Fortunately, I was already on the ground and leading him back to his stall by then, so we were able to make a grab for it before things got really crazy. ^^’