Repairing Elsa

I'll get my excuses out of the way first.  I'm up to my eyeballs in projects at the moment, including a few secret ones.  These will be blogged about eventually, but in the meantime I'm afraid I'm just doing a quick update on Elsa dresses.  There will also be posts on Halloween costumes for the nieces when my parcel of fabric arrives.

So.  You may or may not remember that both Charlotte and Katie wanted Elsa from Frozen dresses for their birthdays earlier in the year.  Along with every other girl of Disney princess age in the World.  I couldn't figure out how to attach cloaks and zips, so ended up making them from lycra.  Charlotte wanted some red on hers.  As you do.  Exhibits A and B.  Two beautiful and clean Elsa dresses.
 

Then I gave them to the girls.  And they wore them!  I know, anyone would think that's why I'd made them!  

Last night they went to see 'Disney on Ice'.  This meant (I'm told) that they had to dress up.  Guess who they wanted to go as?  I dread to think how many Elsas were in that audience.  So, a couple of weeks the dresses were returned to Auntie Sandra for running repairs.  I think the kindest way to put it was that the dresses had been loved to death.  They obviously get plenty of wear out of them.  

We had grubby marks...

Torn under arm seams...

Ripped bodice net...

And then there were the cloaks...

I had had doubts about using net, but this proved it.  I did hear a rumour that at least one of the tears in the cloaks was from a bike riding incident, but we won't dwell on that.

I thought the best way forward would be to change the net for something more substantial.  When searching for ideas I kept coming across organza.  If you've been reading for a while you may recall how much I detest organza.  Then I found this

 and I fell in love.  I NEEDED it.  Sooo pretty.  I ordered 3m.  You can't have too much fabric in a cloak right?  I also ordered some thin, semi-transparent lycra to replace the bodice and arm net.  

I traced the pieces of the dresses I needed to replace.  That was harder than I thought.  Of course, for once in my life I'd actually thrown some traced pattern pieces out a couple of weeks before, and yes the Elsa patterns went with them.  D'Oh!

Anyhoo, here are the final dresses.

Charlotte's still with her red bows.

How pretty?!!  The fabric actually wasn't too bad to work with.  It didn't fray as much as the last stuff I used and it seemed a lot more stable.  I wouldn't say that it's made organza my first choice in future though.  I even attempted a couple of rolled hems, as witnessed above.  They're not brilliant, but I figure no one's going to be paying that much attention.

And here are the girls in action, so to speak.

There may have been lots of Elsas, but how many of them had such pretty cloaks?

On a side note, I was devastated when I started looking for fabric for the dresses.  There's now a McCall's sewing pattern out!

An unexpected job

I haven't dropped off the face of the planet.  I haven't even been really busy.  I just don't seem to have found time to blog in the past couple of weeks.  I'm in between big projects and thought I'd have loads of time to catch up on my retrospective look at princess dresses, but somehow it just hasn't happened.  Hey ho.  as Charlotte said to me last week "But that's just life though, isn't it Auntie Sandra?".  She's right.  I'm not quite sure when our ten year old turned into a philosopher though!

Remember the Elsa dress I made for Katie?  Only a couple of months ago.  I was trying to weigh down the cloak so it had some swoosh to it.  And then I cut it too short.  Here's a reminder.

Turns out the dress doesn't have that problem anymore.  At the weekend I got Katie's dress back to do a small alteration.  Well not so small.  After Katie wearing the dress almost non-stop since her birthday the cloak's stretched.  A LOT!  Exhibits A and B.

 

I've had to chop 8 inches off the bottom!  Of course this was the 8 inches that contained the rather dodgy looking sparkly snowflakes.  So I've just spent a couple of hours gluing sequins back on the bottom.  Fortunately my snowflake design has improved.

I had to get this done this week as it's half term next week and we're all going away for a few days.  If anyone's in the Lake District over the bank holiday and they spot two children running around looking like they've been dragged through a hedge backwards wearing Elsa dresses, the chances are they'll be Charlotte and Katie.

Blocks and sparkles

Charlotte's Elsa dress is almost finished!  All that needs doing is a couple of little bows sewing on and the bodice lining tacking down (a step I completely forgot on Katie's!).  And I've still got ten days until her birthday.  I find it slightly discombobulating (one of my favourite words by the way.  The other is 'dirigible'.) to be finished so long before a deadline.  I've spent the last couple of days getting high on Gem-Tac glue.

What do you think?  I like the red sparkles, although I'm not really sure about how well they tie in with the 'Frozen' theme.  I'm also not too sure about the bows, but it's what Charlotte wants.

My snowflakes have improved since I made Katie's dress.  But don't tell her that.  Actually overall the dress is better.  I'm going to be in so much trouble!  There's no sneaky cuts under the arms of this one.  I think I worked out where I went wrong with the last one. I don't think I added seam allowance all the way around the top net bit of the bodice.

The point and the seam matching is way better in this dress.  I refused to let Charlotte have the bow centre front because it would have covered up the point!  Does that make me a bad Aunt?!

We had to add the trim around the curved top of the bodice on this one as it was slightly too low cut at the front for Charlotte.  I'm hoping that's added enough height to the neckline.

That's obviously not an Elsa dress.  These are the blocks I made on Sunday.  They're for a friend of Other Half's family.  Two squeak, two rattle and two scrunch.  I like making sets of six blocks so you can do this with them:

It appeals to my mathematical side.  Ten would be even better, but I think that might be starting to verge on the ridiculous.  Plus I can really only draw hearts,  so for the other blocks we'd just have to have some kind of unformed blobby shapes.  

Updates

I've been quiet on the blogging lately because I've been too busy actually crafting.  And it's only going to get busier.  I've finished the black and white spotty dress.  I love it!  It's definitely the most wearable dress I've made for myself. I've had a couple of comments at work about it and I've done really well not to point out all the flaws and mistakes in it.  You're not going to get off so lightly though I'm afraid.  I need to get other half to take some photos of me in it.  I'm not sure I want to post pictures of myself, but fair's fair.  I'd have some done already but in the past week when I haven't been at work it's been really foggy here.  And I think it's going to be bad enough posing as it is.  Although, in the mist nobody would see me.  I didn't think this through fully.

I've just started this project in the past week

Recognise it?  Yes, Charlotte decided she wanted an Elsa dress for her birthday in May.  We've had tears.  From Katie.  Who doesn't think that Charlotte should get the same dress as her.  Charlotte has decided on a couple of changes.  She wants red sparkles on the cape and a bow on the front.  I'm really not sure how this is going to work out.  But, if it's what she wants, who am I to argue.  I'm just the slave.  Sorry, the adoring Auntie who loves to sew and make costumes for her two delightful nieces.  I think I was closer with the first description!  SShh.  Don't tell Katie, but the point at the front of Charlotte's bodice and the matching of the panel seams is loads better than the first one I did.

I should think myself lucky.  When I was looking for inspiration for Katie's Elsa dress I came across this website.  Charlotte saw this and wanted, I quote, "the pink one with the big bum".  By which she meant this

How amazing is that?  I think I dodged a bullet there mind!  I heard a couple of days ago that official Elsa dresses were sold out in Disney stores in America and were being sold for hundreds of dollars on Ebay.  I think I'm in the wrong business.  While I was in a fabric/haberdashery shop the other day I got talking to a lady in the queue who was on making her fourth Elsa dress.  I feel quite inadequate only being on my second.  

In a couple of weeks I'm off to a wedding.  I wanted to make my own dress and it's suddenly dawned on me just how close this wedding is.  Panic has started to set in.  I bought this fabric (hence the trip to the fabric shop).

I now just need to decide what to make with it.  I want the basic silhouette of the black and white dress, but with a fuller skirt.  I have no ideas on the details yet.

Also in the next few months I'm going back to my patchwork and quilting roots.  There's several babies on the way from family and friends so I'll be making quilts and blocks for them.  I also owe a friend of other half's family an outfit for their not-quite-so-new baby.  She was born before Christmas.  On top of all that I have my usual cards to make.  As well as a few special ones.  I think I need a lie down, and that's just thinking about all I have to do.  

Bling-tastic!

I think it's just about there! I've come to the conclusion that perhaps Friday night after work wasn't the best time to try to trim the cloak. But surely it's better slightly shorter so that Katie doesn't stand on it or trip over it. Am I convincing anyone that I cut too much off on purpose? No? Oh well. It's not too bad. Just not quite as long as the skirt of the dress. And she's short anyway so no one's going to notice her feet! Now I've just got to convince Katie that the cloak doesn't need to be long enough to trail behind her.

I did manage to sew the trim around the bottom of the cloak on Friday as well. I was hand sewing and I only pricked my finger once and didn't draw blood at all. I think that's a new record. Also started sticking sequins and gems on. I'm afraid with things like that I just clag them on with Gem-Tac. I love it! I do end up covered in the stuff but it's so worth it. It seemed to take ages though. Finished sticking stuff (the technical term) on today but again I was on ages. And it wasn't totally because I kept being distracted by awful TV shows. Mainly, but not totally.

So here it is, the finished Elsa/Frozen dress

Front

and back

Close up detail.  You can see where the cloak's a bit short.

An attempt at a snowflake!  I tried.  I think that's the best that can be said for it.

And a bonus picture of the card I've made for Katie's birthday.  I wanted to keep the blue princess theme going.

I'll take some proper pictures after Katie's birthday.  I might end up sticking more sparkles on before then.  She's definitely a more is more kind of girl.  I always worry that I'm going to overdo the bling but I don't think that's actually possible in Katie's world.

Quick photos

Got Katie to try on Frozen dress today.  It's still unfinished.  The pictures won't be very good quality I'm afraid because they're just taken on my phone.  I never think of taking my camera at useful times.  Oh yes, you're eyes aren't deceiving you, she is wearing her vest!  I know she's supposed to be some sort of ice queen, but really.  Wait until you see the pictures of her in a tutu and socks.  The girl's nothing if not stylish.

I'm quite proud of the technological route these photos went too.  I used bluetooth and uploaded them from my tablet.  Now I just have to learn how to edit them!

She did have a go at twirling.  We need some action shots when dress is fully finished.  We might even persuade her to remove the vest.

Taking shape

As I said in my previous post, I decided to use Simplicity 5520 as a base for the Elsa dress.

Unfortunately it would need quite a lot of tweaking to get the look I was after. Cue copious amounts of greaseproof paper and nicely sharpened pencils. From a nice simple dress with four main pattern pieces we went to one with 11 pieces in the space of a couple of hours. It went quite smoothly, but I did start to get a bit lost off when I tried to add seam allowance back in!

Please excuse the quality of the photos, it's something I'm going to work on in future.  I had to put the pattern pieces on a piece of ivory fabric.  It's not a good day when you realise that your carpet is very similar in colour to greaseproof paper!  Ah well, it meant I didn't have to vaccuum.

The sewing together went smoothly and relatively quickly.  My side front/centre front seams don't quite match, but I won't tell anyone if you don't. For the cloak bit I just cut a piece of net about 2m long to roughly the right length, gathered it and sewed it in the seam between the net and the lycra of the bodice. Katie did try it on when all relavent pieces were together.  It is a little large around the bodice (seriously, these children are weird shapes), but she could at least get in and out of it.  On to the sleeves.  The sleeves included in the pattern weren't the right style at all.  When I made a dress with the pattern last time I did draft some.  By myself.  And amazingly they fit.  I can't remember much about the process other than it took several different books with different instructions before I cracked it.  It was a very proud moment when they fitted into the dress.  I kept pointing them out to people.  Honestly.  The most boring part of a princess dress.  I digress.  I did make the pattern piece slightly longer (in the vain hope that Katie has grown a bit in the last year) and made the wrist end pointy, to look more like Elsa's dress.

Then I tried to attach them.  And I tried again.  And again.  I just couldn't get my head around the logistics of it (this is what happens when you don't follow patterns).  I even tried tacking the sleeve in and I avoid tacking at all costs.  My problem was that to hide the seam in the lining under the arm (basically in her armpit) the rest of the sleeve was being pulled wrong and I'd have ended up sewing it closed.  Not helpful.  In the end, and after several days of head scratching and randomly saying to people "But why won't they go in, WHY?"  I hit upon a solution.  I'm fairly certain it's unorthodox and it felt like cheating but I, whisper, put some teeny, tiny cuts in the bodice.  Just in the seam allowance really.  But it worked!  The dress now has sleeves. I've since hemmed the skirt and sewn in a bodice lining. I really only lined it because I think one layer of net might be too flimsy for the top of the bodice and I thought too many seam allowances in net would be scratchy on small people's skin.

And here we have it. Drumroll please........the almost completed Elsa dress. With a over a week to go until the big day. It's a bit concerning being so nearly done. I've only got to hack off (sorry, carefully measure and trim) the bottom of the cloak and clag on some sparkly bits. I know the original is quite understated in the sparkles department, but Katie's almost 7 and there's nothing understated about her!




The front view.  I'm quite liking how the net looks sparkly as well as the bodice.  It's not, it's just plain white, but it looks good in photos.  I think I've got enough of the trim used around the neckline to go around the bottom of the cloak.  I'm trying to add a bit of weight to the cloak for all important twirling.  The dress should flare out nicely as there's plenty of fabric in the skirt and the lycra's quite heavy.

The bodice front...












and the bodice back.  You can see where the cloak's attached.  After her birthday we'll hopefully have some pictures of a child in the dress, but I'll post some more later in the week of the completed dress.