Professor Trelawney Costume

I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan, so I decided to make a costume to wear to one of the final book release parties this year. Professor Trelawney has always been one of my favorite characters, and her dress worked well for disguising my pregnant belly (I just finished my 2nd trimester). I had an absolute blast making this outfit, and I actually won 1st place in the costume contest at the party that I attended. You can see me with my prize below - a free book and the first spot in line at midnight! Woohoo! If you'd like to know more details about this costume, you can find more info at the bottom of this page.

Although Professor Trelawney wears the exact same skirt and top in both Prisoner of Azkaban and Order of the Phoenix, the accessories and hairstyle do have noticeable differences. I decided to model my costume on the earlier movie because I loved her frizzy hair and kooky head scarf. I ended up making my own wig by sewing hanks of cheap synthetic hair to an old wig base from Halloween. The scarf fabric was quite a lucky find, and although it isn't an exact match, I was thrilled that it mimicked the colors and general patterns so well. I added the fringe myself by taking apart an old tassel and knotting bunches of strings through the ends of the scarf.

It was difficult to find full-length pictures to work from, so I spent most of my time going frame-by-frame through the two short scenes where Professor Trelawney appears in Prisoner of Azkaban (yes, I really am that obsessive!). You can just barely make out the fringe at the bottom of her tunic in this screencap, and you can see the stripes at the bottom of her skirt in a promotional still from Order of the Phoenix. But once I figured out what she was wearing, the rest was very straight-forward. The tunic is made of cotton embroidered with a vine pattern that I dyed to get the right color. It was ridiculously hard to find fabric embroidered with a pattern that was similar to the movie costume, but I'm really happy that I finally stumbled across something that would work. The pattern for the tunic comes from Butterick B5048. I just made the sleeves a bit longer and added cuffs, and the bottom section is slightly longer and more flared. The skirt is made of two simple rectangles with a drawstring waist, and I used three different wool fabrics to create the striped effect.

And last, but not least, I bought a pair of huge round sunglasses from a local costume shop and broke out the tinted lenses to make my glasses. Most of the jewelry came from my stash since I was a bit of a wannabe-hippy in my youth and often wore a variety of new-agey silver jewelry. The only new thing that I made was a necklace with little star charms on it, since you can see Trelawney wearing something similar in the close-up at the top of this page.