Mermaid Costume How-To

It is dark and grey and cloudy and rainy here in Wisconsin today.  So, even though I finished my blouse last night, it is not a good day for taking pictures.  Instead, I thought I'd show you a bit of how I put together E's mermaid skirt.
 First I took some old T-shirts and cut them into the skirt with a tail - this is the underpart which no one sees anyway.  Then I chose my scale fabrics, and cut scalloped strips out of them.

I then pinned on the scallops and sewed them down along the bottom/scalloped edge.  I just built the scales in the same process all the way up the skirt.

 I didn't worry about raw edges because two of the fabrics were knit and while the other one did fray some, it's just a costume!
Hind sight being 20/20 of course, it probably would have been faster to fuse the scales, but then again, maybe not.
Any way, a happy mermaid. 

Oh, and for the 'seaweed' in the hair, I just found some fun fluffy colored yarn and tied a bunch of strips to a head band.
As Mr. Riley says, probably the first girl who ever wanted to dress up like a quilt.