For the last several months, our daughter Stella had insisted that she was going to be Sarah Sanderson from “Hocus Pocus” for Halloween. I swear she started talking about it as early as last Halloween. We even talked about the possibility of me dressing up as Winifred and Margot as Mary.
But then she started talking about being excited to wear a witch’s hat, and I had to break it to her that the Sanderson sisters don’t wear hats. I suggested that she dress up as Thora Birch’s character, Dani Dennison, instead.
She could wear the witch’s hat and be nice and warm in all of the outfit layers. Plus, it was a DIY dream. She was sold, and thus began the adventure in costume-making.
What I love about Dani’s costume in “Hocus Pocus” is that it is very much a homemade-looking outfit, with lots of great fall colors. The main components I needed to recreate were her sun print tunic, orange-rimmed hat, layered skirt, and fringe scarf.
After looking online at photos of her outfit, I went all-out at craft stores. When I couldn’t find a comparable sun print fabric, I decided to buy an orange t-shirt and fabric paint for the top. I also bought yarn from the craft store for the scarf, and different ribbons and fringe trim for the skirt.
The scarf was the first thing I began working on, at the beginning of the month. I did the fringe about every other row, and then went back to add more to make it fuller. It took forever, but the result was worth it.
I also took the cheapie witch hat I bought at Target and added orange to the rim. At first I tried some orange duct tape, but it just didn’t want to stick to the hat. Thankfully, I already had some orange acrylic paint on hand, and that worked much better.
Next I went to work on Dani’s sun tunic. This was tough. I tried to find a lot of reference photos online, but oftentimes the scarf would be obstructing the design on the shirt or the photo quality wasn’t that great. I went as far as watching the movie and pausing at parts to see if I could get a general idea of where the suns were on the top. I probably didn’t need to be so obsessive about these details, but it is such a key part of the costume that I felt I needed to do it justice. I also needed to add black cord to create the lace-up part at the neck of her shirt, and cut the bottom of the top into points.
For the lace-up part of the neck, I cut off the top of the shirt and added a slit. Then I cut teeny holes into each side of the slit to lace the black cord through. I was worried about the cord tearing through the cuts in the shirt, so I improvised and added a little clear glue around each hole to sort of seal them.
Dani also wears a black scarf with little pom-poms around her witch’s hat. It’s a detail of her costume I hadn’t noticed or paid attention to much even after watching the movie a million times. I bought a roll of black tulle and a package of Halloween-colored pom-poms to recreate the look. It took a weird process and some experimenting, but I found a way to glue the pom-poms onto sections of the tulle and keep them in place until they dried.
For Dani’s skirt, I needed some outside help. Thankfully, my sister-in-law Morgan is talented at making costumes and sewing. Dani wears a black skirt with different ribbons and fringe around it. I found a black skirt at Once Upon a Child, a children’s consignment store nearby, as well as a black turtleneck for the costume. I bought the ribbons and fringe at JOANN Fabric, and Morgan went to work on adding them to the skirt.
These elements, along with some red lipstick, a plastic pumpkin bucket, and a lot of attitude, and you’ve got a Dani Dennison!
But what would Dani (or any other witch for that matter) be without a black cat? Thankfully, Margot was ready to be the perfect little Binx the cat. Her costume was embarrassingly easy to put together in comparison to Stella’s, but that helped balance it out. I found a cat tail and ears at Target, some decals that looked like a cat’s nose and whiskers for her face, and used black clothes she already had in her closet.
Because it was a mild weather day on Monday and we might be getting rain for Halloween, I dressed the girls up to take some photos under the beautiful fall trees in our yard. They look like a pretty darn cute pair if I do say so myself.
Stella is already thinking about next Halloween (she really is my daughter), but for now I’m happy to revel in how these little “Hocus Pocus” girls look this year.
Happy Halloween!
