SDCC Costume: Zelda Part 2 - The Dress

So I'm finally ready to start recapping the progress I've been making on the latest costume (the one with the armor I started last summer). As I mentioned I had to put it aside while I finished up school, but now I'm back at it and after a slow start while I adjusted to my non-academic schedule, progress has been happening!

I decided before continuing on the armor, I should probably make the base dress. Since that is the foundation for everything, it would be helpful to make sure that my proportions for everything else were on target.

 Here is a reference picture again of what the completed costume looks like.

Instead of reinventing the wheel I opted to start from a pattern. I usually drape everything on my dress form, but the shape of the dress is so straightforward I figured it wasn't worth the time. 

After shopping around for fabric I opted for a poly satin  in a wonderful purple tone, and a pearly-white crinkled satin for the underdress. I really liked the depth the slightly crinkled texture gave to it, especially when contrasted with the smooth purple on top.

I started with pattern M6027 from Maccall's. The pattern itself is for a knee-length dress, so all I changed was the length, I added an additional 2+ feet to the bottom of each pattern piece to create the underdress:

Sorry for the bad picture.

This part came out very easily, fit like a dream, and made me excited. It's lined with simple cotton muslin for structure (and to keep it from being see-through) with a zip-up back that will be hidden under the corset lacing of the purple overdress.

The next part was the purple overdress. I opted to use the same pattern as I used for the underdress, and this ended up being a mistake - a very annoying one, for 2 reasons.

1. The front is supposed to be in 2 pieces with darts instead of 4 full pieces.
2. There's a lot of flare in the skirt, which made it nearly impossible to get it to lay flat.

Of course, I didn't notice these things until I had it all sewn together and lined. I opted ignore the dart problem (you can't hardly tell anyway) and to cut the center-front out and then fiddle with the rippling problem the flare caused in the skirt... then I cut too much away out of the center. crap.

All pinned together with the pauldrons set on top. (I was having fun with my hair this day).

Usually I would have redone it, but that would have required more fabric (meaning more $$$) and I thought I could salvage the piece. I finally was able to tweak the seams enough to both bring in the center front, and fix the rippling in back enough to call it 'acceptable'.

I whip stitched the necklines of the under and overdresses together, then stitched binding tape around the hem by hand, and pinned it back to be stitched to the lining. The tape also offered additional structure to that edge:

 So that's where the dress stands. Still a ton to do including hemming, adding lacing holes and TONS of decorating, but the base is ready to go.

Up next: skirt embellishments! This update will be written very shortly as I had a few days of insane progress this week.