Halloween Costume Clinic

White Orchid Academy is holding a Halloween Costume Clinic at Fabric Forge on Friday, October 16, a four-hour intensive masterclass in costume making and alterations. It's a one-day session, so you'll be in for the full stretch rather than coming back over several weeks.

The class is led by Annie Chyr, a Houston-based third-generation master patternmaker and professional sample maker. That background matters here: patternmaking is the architecture of a garment, and sample making is the process of refining a design from a sketch into a finished piece. Having someone with that kind of lineage and professional experience at the front of the room means the focus is on the actual construction—how a piece is built from the ground up—rather than just the surface decoration.

Over the four hours, the session covers both costume making and alterations. The costume side is about building a look from scratch, while the alterations side is about taking something that already exists and tailoring it to fit a specific person or character. If you've ever bought a costume that almost worked but didn't quite sit right, that's where the alterations part comes in. The two go hand-in-hand: knowing how to make a garment and knowing how to change one.

It's run by White Orchid Academy, a local Houston operation, and the whole thing takes place at Fabric Forge. The cost is $250 for the session.