Princess Leia dressup

After obsessing at length about what dressup items to make for my kids, I finally made up my mind last month and went for it. Obviously this is close-ish to Halloween so they will make great costumes too, but I really wanted to make things that suited their personalities and that they would enjoy more than once. 

So my girly, princess and Star Wars loving little nerd girl got a princess Leia dress (buns might be coming later....knit/crochet hat with buns on the sides?). The dress is completely self drafted and designed. Kinda scary. Fabric is a nice organic jersey knit that I got for a great price.

She LOVES it. And I totally let her wear it in public.  

  

After staring at pictures of Leia in her dress, my two biggest conclusions were that it had no shoulder seams, and the hood was really just a rectangle of fabric that was attached at either side of the deep keyhole opening in the back.  Kinda cool. I made Clover's slightly shorter than the original just so she's not tripping on it all the time. And it's also a lot less drapey, mostly because I wanted it to be easy to play in. 

The dress was supposed to be fully lined, and I planned on cutting out two identical dress pieces to sew together, but I didn't know what I was doing when I cut this dress piece out and totally ruined the rest of the 2 yards of knit I had for the project. The dress was actually cut out in one continuous piece and the only seams are the ones that go from under the arm and down the sides. I folded my fabric in half from top to bottom and then selvage to selvage after that, so the top fold of the fabric ended up on top of the shoulders.....if that makes any sense. It was really stressful because I wasn't sure it was going to work, and having made my own pattern, even if I cut it out right I wasn't sure if it would be the right size and shape.

I'm sad it didn't work out to line it because then there would have been no hemlines and it would have looked really clean. Oh well! 

It's a slight a-line shape with flared, flowy sleeves, and a comfortably fitted high collar. It also used to have a cute wooden button on the back of the neck, but it cracked in half in the washing machine. Oops. 

The belt isn't officially done, but it's functional. It turned out "pointier" than I intended, but she still likes it. And she can mostly take it on and off on her own. Apparently it also doubles as a crown, because I saw her walking around with it on her head today. It's made out of a gauzy linen and silver vinyl. 

 

 

There were also some wild thing sightings out on our deck today, but that costume isn't really done yet.....we'll save that post for another day.....

But I gotta share the cute shots of my little Goggles.