Genie Genius

A friend is going to a birthday party, and the guests have been asked to wear costumes relating to their favourite childhood TV programmes. She loved “I dream of Jeannie” with Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden. She wanted a genie costume, preferably ‘bright, and orange’ [the original one was pink…but then we didn’t know that, we all had b&w tellies back then]I dug out the “Make it Easy” patterns which a friend gave me a little while ago. This was a Marshall Cavendish Part-work from 1984, and I had parts 1-20. They are all loose fitting, very easy garments. I found a tee-shirt top, and elasticated waist trousers. I figured I could convert these into a suitable top & harem pants, with head-dress

Next stop, Leicester’s “Golden Mile” I was able to buy a sari length for a very good price. This gave me an orange fabric with a greeny/blue border  just right for making the pants [I sewed simple casings on waist and ankles for elastic]

The end of the sari length was the green print, so I cut the top from that. I added some gold upholstery fringe round the bottom.Then I cut a strip of heavy interfacing, 23” x 2”, and covered it with more orange, and joined the ends. I drew round a plate to get a circle of fabric which made the top of the headdress. The remaining piece of fabric was hemmed and attached to make the scarf.

You cannot see the sparkles on the fabric – but it is really pretty and catches the light. I sewed a few gold buttons on the headdress as ‘jewels’ and also put one centre front on the trousers [it is always hard to spot front and back on these simple pants] This fabric does fray horribly – so I made sure to put the ends of the sleeves and bottom of the top on the selvedge – and all other seams were French Seamed, to enclose raw edges.

My friend will wear fancy sandals, and is borrowing a ‘Magic’ Lamp for the event. I am happy with the result, although I suspect Patrick and May on the GBSB would spot my errors. I did try very hard to match up patterns though!

Sari lengths like this are quite brilliant for producing two part costumes in matching prints. Abracadabra!!

Did anyone else watch this bizarre sitcom? I preferred Bewitched myself!