Sally posed to hold a skull, large flower head, or potion.

If you made the body, head, and hair from my earlier tutorials Part 1 and Part 2, you’re ready to make the clothing for Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

For the dress, decide which color theme you’ll go with. I found several versions – one with a burgundy base, and others using greens and  some with browns and orange tones. It really doesn’t matter which color scheme you go for, but chose ONE. Using too many clashing colors doesn’t work well. Stick with the same tones that compliment each other.

Making the Dress

You’ll need:
2 1/2 – 3 1/2 yards of brown fabric (depends on width)
2-3 yards of main color fabric(for mine I used green)
1 yard blue fabric
2 (1 yard each) complimentary tones fabric
Permanent black marker
Large hot glue gun/glue sticks
Sidewalk chalk and pen
2 safety pins or a couple of straight pins
Tissue paper
Scissors
1) Measure from the bottom of Sally’s neck to where you wish her length of dress to be(there are several versions online). Cut 2 brown pieces of fabric following those measurements.
2) Lay the pieces on a table or floor and draw the patchwork pattern with chalk (see image 1 and 2 for detail).

Image 1. Pattern of patches on Sally’s dress.

3) Take your tissue paper and place a single layer across your patchwork drawings. Outline the patchwork on the tissue with a pen. Cut the tissue pieces out.
4) Cut your patches following your tissue paper patterns.
5) With the hot glue gun, glue the patches to the brown fabric.

Image 2: The front and back of Sally’s dress and pinned at the shoulders.

6) Place the two brown/patchwork pieces on Sally by pinning the corners together at the top of the dress near the shoulders (see image 2) and hot glue the seams on top and at the sides up to just underneath the arm pit area. Remove the pins.
7) Press down the shoulder corners and glue edges to the side front and back to mimic the appearance of a sleeve. Take the tissue, cut out the shape of your shoulder sleeve  area and cut out 2 more pieces of fabric patches to lay over sleeves. Glue the patches to the sleeve area.
8) Take the black marker and draw stitch marks along each patch.
9) Cut the bottom of the dress in a jagged pattern as top image. If desired, make a V-cut at neckline.

Over the next week, look for the next tutorial: Part 4: Completing Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas.