Lady Bug Costume

Carnival season is back, folks, and it's gonna be a long one this year. So I think it's fitting that I decided to make not one, but two new costumes this year!
I've been wanting to make a lady bug costume for ages (they're my favourite animal and I used to have a really cute lady bug costume as a toddler), but I never knew how to make one that would look different from a store-bought costume and still be kinda cute. Well, recently I got inspired and drew this:

It was an idea on how to do the wings, because that's the most important part, and for the rest I could just put on a black dress or shirt.
This week is finals week, which meant that I had exams on Monday,  Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  So of course I had to go out and buy the fabric for the wings on Wednesday after the exam (5pm) and use my study breaks that evening to start making a pattern for a small bolero - my genius idea for how to make the wings wearable. (You'll notice there's no such thing on the drawing - even while in the fabric store I figured I'd mount the wings on some grosgrain ribbon and fasten that with safety-pins,  it was only when I couldn't find a suitable ribbon in the store that I began to think about alternatives).
On Thursday,  I wrote my exam, went home, ate lunch and did some revision for the exam the next day. When my head really couldn't take anything in anymore, I started sewing. (Well, I did bits and pieces during my study breaks before, but that was only 5-20 minutes, so it doesn't count).

Bolero pieces in my study break.
The wings are made of red polyester satin and white organza, 1m each. The bolero and the dots are made out of that great black fabric I got from my brother years ago - it truly is a gift that keeps on giving.
I bag-lined the bolero and fixed the wings in the shoulder seam of the outer layer. Other than the fact that I sewed on one of the front pieces back to front and couldn't turn the front pieces after bag-lining, because my visual-spatial imagination abandoned me today, it went together very well. I ended up opening up the side-seams to turn the front pieces, then closed each piece with top stitching and finally closed the side-seam again with a big zig-zag-stitch. No-one's gonna be looking under my arms in any case.

I used my sugar-bowl-lid as a template for the dots. Another great attribute of the fabric: it hardly frays, especially not when handled carefully.

I used fabric glue to fix the dots to the red wings, and I think, that's already it! Here'so the finished result (on my dressform, because none of my mirrors are big enough to take a decent costume-selfie).

From the back...









...and from the front. It's a bit tight around the arms, but other than that, I really like it. It was a nice way to take my mind of finals :)
Wish me luck for my exam tomorrow!