The Princess And The Frog

So, Christmas rolled around again in 2011 and it was time to make more costumes.  With a lot of persuading Charlotte decided that she would like Tiana's green dress from 'The Princess and the Frog'.  It took a lot of persuading.  I kind of wish I'd left this dress until later.  I love the look of the dress in the film and don't think I did it justice.  I'd like to have another go, as I'm sure now with some more experience that I could do a better job, but I'm not sure either of the girls would let me have another go at it.

I love it! There's no pink.

I used crepe back satin for most of the dress with tulle for the very bottom layer of the skirt.  I used one shade of green, but I used both sides of the fabric to get a bit of colour and texture variation.  I used double the fabric in all of the leaves and petals of the dress and that's where the major problem lies.  The finished dress is just sooo heavy.  It would even have been better as a skirt and top, but I'm not sure the skirt would have stayed up, Charlotte hasn't got any hips to speak of.  Perhaps braces would have been the way forward?!  There was real concern at the time that Charlotte wouldn't actually be able to wear it because of the weight.

I made and lined (yet more weight) a bodice for underneath the petals at the top and then just attached the petals on before attaching the skirt.  If memory serves correctly (we are talking three years ago) I had to sew the skirt on by hand as my poor machine couldn't cope with all the layers where leaves overlapped.

This is Charlotte on Christmas morning just after she'd unwrapped the dress.  Hence the clutter around her.  I am very proud of the headband to go with this one.  If only we'd managed to straighten the pollen type bits on top before the photos!  I also really like the giant detachable waterlily on her hip.  I seem to be having problems with photos for this project.  I can either have them like this so you can't see the detailing or crop the photos and have everything so pixellated you can't see anything at all.  I might get the hang of this technology thing eventually.  I might not as well.

She is also wearing an underskirt as well.  Not that you can tell.  For a few of the princess dresses now I've tried to make hooped skirts to go underneath.  It's never been a roaring success.  If I didn't leave things until the last minute (ie the week before Christmas) I might do better.  One day I'll look up instructions on how to make them properly.  For the Tiana dress I tried to first use plastic hooping but the weight from the dress meant that it buckled.  I then had to try metal hooping. As you can see It doesn't seem to make that much difference.

On the positive side, I did learn a lot making this dress.  Not to make a dress that weighs more than the child wearing it, for instance.