Cute Pictures!

I know I'm biased about the fact that they're cute, but I don't care!  First up we have Charlotte as Maleficent.  She's doing her dark and vengeful look.  Couldn't get her to smile at all!

I added some elastic under her chin to try to keep the headdress on.  It doesn't look great, but it's effective.  It means she can actually move her head now while wearing it and she doesn't have to hold on to one of the horns to keep it stable.  When I look at these pictures I realise just how over the top and big those horns are for her size!

The expression slipped slightly in the next picture and a smile half appeared!

Then we have the essential 'back of the costume' shots.

I think if I made Maleficent again I would put some wire in the collar pieces.  They will stand up, but they won't stay up at the moment.  Other than that I think I'm happy overall.

Next up we have Katie as Anna.

I'm loving this outfit!  Even though I had a couple of meltdowns making it I think it's one of my favourites.  Mind you, I think it's the cloak with the pom poms that I like best!

And what I think may be the cutest picture ever...

We do need a new hairband for the hat already though.  There's a strip of bias binding across the middle of the hat for a hairband to slot through, to keep the hat on.  The hairband has somehow (mysteriously!) broken.  To be honest I'm still amazed that we got her wearing the hat in the first place!

Making Anna

It all started so well.  I had plenty of time to make Katie's birthday costume.  Over a fortnight anyway.  Which in Auntie Sandra time is loads.    You may recall she wanted Anna from Frozen.

                                                      
I found a fantastic tutorial on how to make the cape here at Fleeting Thing, along with templates for the dress and skirt patterns.  I was going to do the whole outfit as they had, with separate skirt, top and waistcoat.  But  decided instead just to make a dress.  I had some dark blue polycotton left over from a Tardis dress I made a couple of years ago (you may get the story on here one day!), so thought I'd just make the rest of the dress from polycotton too.  The cape was more difficult.  It's really difficult finding fabric in that weird pinky/purple colour.  I found some stretch bengaline in the right colour.  I also had no idea what bengaline was, but thought I'd just have to make it work!  Turns out it's great for a cape.  It does have a bit of a stretch, but just enough to help you ease shapes together.  It's also quite heavy, and good for swishing.

Materials arrived and I drafted and cut out pattern pieces.  I did start timing myself to see how long it would take to do a project.  It took three hours to draft, cut and sew the bodice.

It took another hour to draft, cut and sew the skirt.

At this point I managed to leave the timer running overnight.  By the time I found it I'd apparently been working for fifteen hours.  I abandoned the timing exercise!

It was when I started on the cloak that it all went wrong.  I made the capelet to try on Katie.  I thought it was probably the wrong size, but it was a good starting point.  It turns out I needed to add an extra three inches to the back and front pieces.  It turns out our Little Mermaid is quite broad shouldered!  I was all set to make another capelet when I lost a week.  Careless of me I know!  I still have no idea how I managed it, especially when I knew that February only had 28 days.  But there it is.  One day I thought I had over a fortnight to just relax and sew at my own pace, the next I had a week.  I had a meltdown panic!  I think my other half did a very good job of not throttling me.  Instead he just rolled his eyes a bit and came with me to the local craft shop to get more bits and pieces.

It turns out that I had not read all of the instructions on cape making.  Rookie mistake.  It required putting bias binding around the raw edges.  Instead I had a go at a rolled hem.  My sewing machine didn't appreciate this decision.  It chewed fabric and pulled thread.  It did not look good.  Hence the trip to the craft shop.

After cape making it was decorating time.  I'd bought some paints to do the designs on the front of the bodice and on the skirt.  Unfortunately it turned out that they weren't all suitable for dark fabrics.  I ended up doing what I swore I would never do.  I did hand embroidery!!  I've never done it before, so why not learn front and centre of a garment that's going to be a present?!  The first flower was a bit shaky...

  
But I think you'll agree the second one worked better...

If only the same could be said for my painting!  On the bodice I used the template from Fleeting Thing, but I had to change the size a little.  I made templates for the pattern on the skirt and cape.  Making good use of a small dinner plate for the curves at the bottom.  It's all hi-tech in my house!  I chalked the outlines and then painted free hand.

It took quite some time to get around that skirt.  I had to paint a couple of repeats, wait for it to dry and then move it around a bit.  We were jumping over wet paint all weekend.

Anyhow, after several disasters, here's the completed dress

and cape

Check out those pom poms!  And it's ready in time for Katie's birthday.  Woo hoo.  I've just finished making the matching hat from Fleeting Thing.    I made a quick hat to get Katie to try on.  It looked like it was made for a doll!  Katie's theory was "I'm really skinny, so I have a small head!".  You've got to love her logic.  It was a touch small, but not as bad as feared.  I added a bit more room to the pattern pieces, and now it's good to go.  I'm not sure we'll manage to persuade Katie to actually wear it however!

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.