Olive's First Halloween: Progress Report II

Olive's costume needs:

Shako Brim
Shako Emblem (trying to figure out how to do that, may be lazy and just make a star)
Shako Strap (do not trust her to keep it on out of the kindness of her heart)
Shako Top Piece
Chicken Plume (must be a universal thing, my high school band called them chickens, and my college band called them chickens... despite being separated by ~1500 miles)
Epaulets (not sure I'm doing these. Me=Lazy)
Cape Buttons
Zipper (or some sort of secure method, I don't have a separating zipper so that puts me in a sticky place)
New Hem on the Coat (positive I measured correctly but surprise...)

I think that's it... that just seems like so much but it really isn't. I'm on the fence about some of these - do I really want to hem the coat? It's reminiscent of my uniform junior year. I could have been a good 6 mo pregnant and not needed a new uniform. Senior year at least it was near perfect. Like it should since it was built to my measurements (or near enough, whatshisface has no idea where the waist is and put my high hip for my waist measurement so that was a wee bit roomy). Epaulets may look silly since her "shoulder" is so sloped (nevermind that's now how you measure the shoulder on quadrupeds) but I'm wondering if I need to hide the attachment of the cape... I still have a month to figure it out.

Here's how fitting has gone most times...

 

"I'm not so sure about this..."

 "That's the cookie bag!"

 "Yay! Cookie!"                        

Since she forgets she is getting a cookie until the very end (every single time), I feel that it's not a bribe. More a reward. Or compensation. Whatever. She gets a cookie, I question my ability to measure correctly.
I swear I measured her several different times but somehow all of the pattern pieces were too big and I ordered far too much fabric. Now I'm tempted to make a cape for myself, just because I miss mine and we didn't have them with the new uniforms and that made me very sad (just like the news about the changes to Homecoming this year. I want to know who thought that was a good idea. But I digress). I have no idea how to draft an armhole for a dog so I aired on the side of caution and it's huge. Like I could fit my arm through probably (I am not trying, I remember what happened when I tried on an old ballet costume. I think my mom almost laughed herself sick while looking for the seam ripper).

But you can see that Olive's ruff is coming in so very nicely. Three months ago it would have barely puffed up and would have looked very sad. Now it's adorable. I just need to remember to hide her tags for photos. I really want to get her a new ID tag- DH put the wrong zip code on the back (before we moved) and it is heavy for her heavy martingale collar, not the thin safety collar. We switched so her coat wouldn't separate as much- no worries, we still use the martingale for walks (or as she knows it "potty", I'm not sure how she figured that out, wish she knew "walk" instead) so there won't be a pretty-much-Sheltie running loose. If we didn't use a martingale she would have slipped her collar long ago when we were just starting on leash manners,.