Category: Disney

1970’s Elsa Skirt

Published on by essieofwho

A few months ago, I had plans to go to a pop culture convention with some friends of mine. Since I’m loosing weight, the only “geeky” clothes that fit me was a few t-shirts and my Tardis jumper skirt. I had some time at that time, so I began working on new skirts and costumes I could make and finish in time to wear to the convention.

Unfortunately, the convention plans ended up falling through and in my disappointment, I set everything I sewed to wear to the convention aside. This week, I began to drag all my unfinished projects I worked on for the convention out so I could finish them. One of them was an Elsa skirt using a reprint of a 1970’s skirt pattern.

Continue reading “1970’s Elsa Skirt” →

Elsa’s Frozen Fever Dress-Part 2

Published on by essieofwho

After a writer’s block last week, I finally finished the last post about how I made Elsa’s Frozen Fever dress! Although this is the last post about the dress, the posts about the shirt and cape will not be posted for a while because I have yet to work on them. XD

In my last post, I talked about sewing the dress together and talking about how I sewed the shirring into the back of the dress. Today, I’ll talk about sewing sequins onto the dress and finishing the dress.

Continue reading “Elsa’s Frozen Fever Dress-Part 2” →

Elsa’s Frozen Fever Dress-Part 1

Published on by essieofwho

A few months ago, I planned on going to Phoenix Comicon 2016. I ended up not going because I wanted to take care of my ill family member, but when I was planning on going I decided to make and wear Elsa’s dress from Frozen Fever…

Elsa Frozen Fever

I recently just finished the main dress, so I thought I’d talk about how I made it and what it looks like done! Continue reading “Elsa’s Frozen Fever Dress-Part 1” →

Anna’s Coronation Dress- Finishing the Skirt

Published on by essieofwho

After what feels like forever, I can now finally make the last post about the skirt for Anna’s coronation dress! You can read my other posts about the skirt here and here.

I’m not going to lie, I’m very happy this skirt is done. I was getting very tired of working on it and seeing it around my house. Now that it’s done, I can work on long list of to-sew projects that keeps growing every week. (Most of them are repairs or adjustments to clothes so you won’t see them here on my blog. Especially since they are uninteresting and boring. 😉 )

Continue reading “Anna’s Coronation Dress- Finishing the Skirt” →

Anna’s Coronation Dress- Skirt Panels and Pattern Fix

Published on by essieofwho

Progress on the skirt for Anna’s coronation dress was fast, but then quickly slowed down due to life, a virus I caught, and other projects I’m working on. Now that I’m nearing completion of the skirt, I decided to finish writing my posts about the skirt.

In the last post I made about the skirt I talked about the fabric I found for the skirt and an instruction error in the pattern. Since that is the most important part of this post, I’ll talk about that first.

What exactly happened was while I was cutting out the fabric for the light green skirt panels (These are the panels that go on both sides of the olive green appliqued panel) I saw on the pattern piece that ten panels needed to be cut. I thought that was weird because there are ten olive green panels in the skirt. Since the light green panels are supposed to go on both sides of the olive green panels, I thought I needed to cut twice that number of panels.

For my own amusement, I decided to try to cut out ten panels and see what happens. Since the light green satin (The name of the satin color I used is celery) I was using for the light green panels was on clearance and I already knew based off my own attempts to drape the skirt myself, I knew I needed a lot of fabric so I bought all the fabric the store had. This ended up totaling the twice the amount of yards the Simplicity pattern called for. Because of this, I knew that if I followed the pattern’s instructions and cut ten light green panels, I could always cut more without worrying about where to buy more fabric. Continue reading “Anna’s Coronation Dress- Skirt Panels and Pattern Fix” →

Anna’s Coronation Dress- Appliques Done and Skirt Panels

Published on by essieofwho

Everyone, I have some good news! After five or six months of on and off work, I finally finished sewing the appliques onto the skirt panels for Anna’s coronation dress! You can read how I began working on the dress here.

I hated working on the appliques because I overworked my thumb, thus forcing me to not be able to do any hand sewing for at least a week. Next time I do any sort of hand sewing on appliques, I need to create a work schedule to give my hand breaks.

Anyway, here’s what all 10 skirt panels with the appliques sewn on look like…

anna coronation dress skirt 3 Continue reading “Anna’s Coronation Dress- Appliques Done and Skirt Panels” →

Favorite Patterns for 2015- Simplicity

Published on by essieofwho

Finally, I made the follow up post to my favorite sewing patterns from McCall’s! (Just in time for Halloween too) It took me longer than I wanted to type this post because Simplicity and McCall’s released even more new costume patterns for sale. This was driving me crazy because… well… I thought they would release them at once and be done with it. Instead they released them in phases. Since I cannot go to a store as easily as I could last year, it took me a while to buy all the patterns I wanted.

Since I’m currently reorganizing my sewing room, I was unable to take photos of all the patterns I bought and wanted to feature in this post. Because of this, I’m using pictures from Simplicity’s website to show what the costumes should look like. Continue reading “Favorite Patterns for 2015- Simplicity” →

Anna’s Coronation Dress- All the Pretty Appliques

Published on by essieofwho

Despite planning to make Anna’s coronation dress from Frozen, I held back talking about this costume because I wanted to finish it first, then make a post about how I made it, complete with photos of the finished dress. Since I decided to make this dress over a year ago and I’m still working on it, I decided to make a post about my progress on the dress.

Although I can relate to Elsa and her struggles, especially since this past year was very hard on me, I look like Anna. My hair is the same color as Anna’s, I have freckles, and I have bangs. (I’m growing my bangs out but they’re taking so long I’m getting used to them) I can also be really awkward and say silly things when I’m nervous. (It’s especially obvious (and embarrassing) when I’ve go to conventions and tried to make small talk with not just the actors I’m getting autographs from but also people standing next to me in line, anyone I sit next to in panels, someone at the ticket counter, guys, ect.) So, I thought it would make sense to make one of Anna’s dresses and wear it at a convention. That way I could be awkward and everyone will not think I’m weird! XD

I originally wanted to make Anna’s peasant outfit for Phoenix Comicon 2014, but that ended up not working out. I still plan on finishing the costume, but since I got sick of running into the skirt fabric while looking for other fabric, I decided to finish the coronation dress first.

In case anyone forgot what Anna’s coronation dress looks like, here’s a picture of it in the Art of Frozen book…

anna coronation ref

Last year, when I began making Anna’s dress, I decided to draft the pattern for the skirt from scratch. Everything was going fine with the pattern drafting… until Simplicity released pattern number 746/1215…

DSC09073b

After seeing the pattern, I debated if I should use my self-drafted pattern or Simplicity’s. It took me a few months of on-and-off thinking before I decided to use the pattern for my skirt.

I decided to use the pattern because it came with applique patterns and a placement guide for the appliques. Since I had problems figuring out how to place the appliques on the skirt and no energy to figure it out, I took the easy way out and depended on Simplicity to figure it out for me. Continue reading “Anna’s Coronation Dress- All the Pretty Appliques” →

Elsa Inspired Prom Dress

Published on by essieofwhoLeave a comment

I’m slowly getting the chance to finish the dresses I was planning on making for sale at my Etsy shop. (My day job has been driving me crazy lately so I don’t have the time to sew like I want to) I was able to finish a dress and list it a while, so I decided to talk about it.

I had an idea a while ago to make a prom dress inspired by Elsa’s Snow Queen outfit from the movie Frozen. Although the outfit would look cool as a prom dress, I thought for prom or another formal dance it might be a little much and not that easy to move in. So, I set about making a prom dress inspired by Elsa’s Snow Queen outfit.

elsa prom dress final

The dress was made with sequin dot fabric with a crinkle lame overlay on the bodice. The top of the bodice was made with light blue chiffon and has beads and sequins sewn onto the edges. The skirt is made out of satin and the whole entire dress, including the skirt, is lined with lining fabric.

Like I said before, I put the dress up for sale at my Etsy shop so if anyone likes it, wants it, and can fit in it, you can buy it! XD

As for the other dresses I’m making for sale, they’re coming along slowly. I’m not sure what happened that slowed progress down, but I’m working at a snail’s pace. (Or, that’s what it feels like!) I’m not sure if I’ll get all the dresses I’m working on done by the end of the month, but I’ll try to get at least one done!

Sewing (And Costume) Work-in-Progress Mass Update- The January 2015 Edition

Published on by essieofwhoLeave a comment

This past month I’ve been sewing a lot. So much that I feel bad because I’ve been ignoring my art! Originally I planned on sewing my costumes for Taiyou Con and the up-coming Renaissance Festival and nothing else, but a few weeks ago my vehicle got hurt so badly I couldn’t drive it anywhere. I know this is old news (I talked about it in my last post), but because I couldn’t drive anywhere, I was stuck at home on my weekends with nothing to do. I did have a lot of sewing projects built up for months that I just didn’t want to work on, so I pulled out as many as I could find and then began finishing or repairing them.

One of the first costumes I pulled out was the bodice for my Miku Hatsune Cantarella dress. Since I made the dress back in 2011, I fixed the back of the bodice in 2014 so it would fit my growing bust better. Now that my bust has finished growing, the bodice was too small. When I fixed the bodice, I thought I’d grow an inch at most so adding some ribbon to make the bodice lace up was the best option. I ended up not growing an inch. I grew a few inches. So, in order for the bodice to be fixed so I can continue to wear it, I needed to add more fabric to the back of the bodice. I ended up adding so much fabric to the back of the bodice I could add a zipper instead of making it a lace up.

Here’s what the bodice looked like after I sewed the zipper in and before I pressed the seams…

mikuhatsunebodice

After I found that bodice, I found another Miku Hatsune bodice, this time for the 7th Heaven Dragon 2020. Here’s what the artwork looks like…

Hatsune Miku 7th heaven dragon 2020 Continue reading “Sewing (And Costume) Work-in-Progress Mass Update- The January 2015 Edition” →