Lady Amalthea from The Last Unicorn: Progress

Lady AmaltheaI used to be obsessed with The Last Unicorn when I was a kid. When I heard they were doing a movie tour recently, I HAD to go, and in costume of course!

This costume was pretty easy to make- it’s a long off the shoulder princess seam dress. For the sleeves I just draped fabric on my arms and left the opening really wide, which I gathered to make the poof. The stripes on the front are Wonder-Undered pieces of purple ribbon that I satin stitched on the sides. The pockets are real and the edges are lined with the same ribbon. The top is covered with a pinkish bias tape and finished with lace. The main fabric is reversed (to avoid the shine) discontinued lavender Casa satin. It is lined with a cheap lavender cotton broadcloth.

For structure there is a cotton, plastic boned bodice connected at the top seam and armholes. A chiffon petticoat is connected to the bottom of the inner bodice (to avoid an outer seam at the hips). The wig is a white Persephone from Epic Cosplay. I just had to curl the ends.

See my gallery of the final product here!

Cinderella Costume: Progress

Cinderella CostumeI made a Cinderella costume for a Children’s Hospital of Atlanta volunteer visit, and plan to wear it to future events (both for volunteering and conventions). Cinderella’s dress looks daunting because of all the material involved, but its really pretty easy.

What really helped was having a great pattern. I forgot to take but a few progress shots because this was one of those crazy whirlwind projects of mine! For the most part I followed this Simplicity pattern I got in a $1 sale. The skirt (separate with a hidden zipper and a hook closure) is pretty much the same as the pattern. I used a tiny rolled hem to finish it. For the bodice I just used the main part without the pattern’s sleeves. I did shorten it a couple inches I think. It is also self-lined with plastic boning. The white sleeves are cotton tubes stuffed with Polyfil with gathered satin casing that I machine sewed onto the bodice on one side, and hand sewed underneath. I added hooks to keep the bodice connected to the skirt. The white side poof things are just semi circles with pleats. The blue fabric is a discontinued powder blue Casa satin, and the white is a bridal satin from the remnants pile. Despite how big the dress looks, I think I only used around 5 yards of the main fabric.

Underneath I have a hoop skirt for structure. I used this tutorial, except without all the math. Its not very clean since I made the measurements up, but does the trick! I also made a chiffon petticoat to go over it. I will make a thicker tulle petticoat in the future.

The wig is a Dark Ash Blonde Jeannie from Arda Wigs. I just didn’t attach the long poytail, and used the short existing one to pin up into a bun. I cut the bangs and left them long on the sides to pin over the hairline. The headband is a strip of blue satin lined with pearls and glued to a headband, with buttons glued on the end. The necklace is just a strip of velvet ribbon with snaps sewed on. My shoes are tacky glitter plastic jelly shoes I found on clearance, but the kids loved them. ;)

“Historically Accurate” Merida: Progress

drawingI love Disney princesses, like… woah. I’ve always wanted to be one, and I finally did it for AWA! But of course I had to complicate things and made an original, not accurate, version for my first one. :P

There’s a lot to say about this costume. It started out with me loving Merida, and loving crazy red hair and freckles, but not wanting to do a costume that’s so incredibly overdone right now. Her everyday dress is okay, but its actually kind of boring (blasphemy! I know). One day I was at the ren fest, and I saw this gorgeous red rabbit pelt at the fur stall, and I thought, wow, this is so Merida! I knew then that I had to do some kind of alternate version of her. The other princesses had “historically accurate” fanart, why not Merida, too?

I started out trying to research the time period of the movie. No luck, and apparently other people had the same problem. The architecture and dresses and materials and just everything in the movie is a mish mash of time periods, so I had to make something up. I also had a difficult time pin pointing specific Scottish fashion. Seems that they wore the same clothes as their European neighbors and nothing super specifically Scottish. (My sources are Google and Wikipedia mind you, I’m not part of the SCA or anything like that to get super secret historical accuracy information, maybe one day). So I left it alone for awhile.

lucrezia_borgiaThen I saw the show “Borgia: Faith and Fear”, and I beheld Lucrezia Borgia. She has curly red hair and immediately reminded me of a proper Merida. And her dresses are very similar if you look past the fine fabric and poofy sleeves. Just looking at this picture, I thought, this is it! This is my version of Merida! And that time period is 15th/16th century, the clothing Italian. And since the Scottish at this time wore whatever generic European fashions were around, this could have been something Merida would have worn, assuming Brave takes place somewhere in the 1400-1500s.

danielle_everafterStill not convinced? Look at this picture of Danielle from Ever After. Yeah, that is almost the same exact dress Merida wears, and its from the same time period.
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