Elsa's Cape

Kayla and I have started her favorite part of the costume...Elsa's cape! Kayla says she loves the cape the most because it is so "twirly" and because she wants to fly of course. So I took her to JoAnn's and let her pick out the fabric for the cape (and I loved her choice!). She ended up picking a light blue chiffon, and we bought 3 yards to make sure it was extra long. 

I cut the fabric in half (width) and cut both pieces diagonally from one corner to the other to make 4 panels. Next I lined up the panels like this:

Once I got the panels together I sewed a seam on each side. For the top, I measured from under Kayla's armpit, around her back and to the other armpit (10 inches) This is where the cape will sit. I left 1/2 inch extra on each side to allow for the cape to wrap in the front a little more like Elsa. So I cut the top off the cape where it was 11 inches wide and sewed a seem. 

 

Once all of the edges (except the bottom) had seems I pinned it to Kayla so I could trim the the bottom. 

I didn't want to take too much off so I just trimmed enough to make it even on both sides.

Now I will sew the bottom, and Kayla and I will start working on the finishing touches. 

At first we wanted the cape to be really sparkly (we still do) but that sparkly spray that I got makes the fabric sort of stiff and less flowy. So we are still coming up with different ideas on how to finish the cape.

For now here is what the cape looks like with the skirt and top (the bottom of the cape is not finished in these pictures):

And of course, the cape had to be tested for flowiness before it was approved:

There will be another post once we finish the cape.

Elsa's Dress (Part I)

Ever since we saw Frozen in November, my daughter, Kayla, has talked about nothing else. We purchased the soundtrack off of iTunes as we were walking out of the theater and have probably listened to it 999,999,999 times since then. I have to admit, though, I’m not sure who liked the movie more, me or Kayla. I love dancing around the house with her and singing at the top of our lungs to “Let it Go” or “Do You Wanna Build A Snowman.”

Kayla was lucky enough to get the Anna dress and Anna boots from Santa for Christmas, but his elves (the Disney store) ran out of Elsa dresses. I promised Kayla that we would go back after Christmas once the craziness was all done and get her the Elsa dress, but they have been sold out since the movie came out. Even now, in March, they are sold out. We have been checking on a weekly basis if they have any more in stock, but we haven’t had any luck.

So, I finally decided that we would make our own Elsa dress. I knew this was going to be hard because the only things I have ever made with a sewing machine before were square or rectangle blankets and pillows. Those were easy, but they only consisted of 2 pieces.

I thought about how I would make the dress for a couple of days (which was a loooooooonnnnnnng time for Kayla). I spent an afternoon looking through all of the different posts on how to make Elsa's dress to get some ideas. 

Kayla and I have been making a lot of paper dresses recently, so we decided to try a paper Elsa dress first:

Kayla loved this, but I made it a little too tight so it ripped while she was dancing around. Next we tried to make a practice pattern for the skirt and corset.

We were pretty happy with how this turned out, so we decided it was time to try the real dress.

PATTERNS

SKIRT

For Elsa’s skirt, I knew I wanted it to just touch the floor in the front then have a little extra length in the back. I decided to make a 5 panel skirt with 1 panel in the front, one on each side and 2 in the back. I bought 3 yards (which is way more than enough for this project) of true grid pattern paper from Joann’s at $1.99 per yard. 

First I took the measurement of Kayla’s waist right below her belly button. Then I measured from her bellybutton to the floor. So here were Kayla’s measurements:

                Waist: 20.5 inches

                Bellybutton to floor: 22.5 inches

Now, it took me a while to figure out how I wanted to do the panels, but I finally decided that the front three would be the same width on the top (4.5 inches) and bottom (9.5 inches), the front one would be 22.5 inches, the two side panels would have one side (the side that connects to the front panel) 22.5 inches and the other side 23.5 inches. The two back panels were both 3.5 inches wide on top and 8.5 inches wide on the bottom. The length of the side that connected to the side panels were 23.5 inches and the other side was 25 inches. So pattern ended up looking like this:

After I got all the pieces cut out, I taped them together and wrapped it around Kayla to make sure it would fit her (which it did). 

CORSET

The corset was very easy to do. I took the following measurements:

                Bust: 21.5 inches

                Center of chest to armpit: 6 inches

               Center of chest to about an inch below the         belly button: *

                Armpit to hips: *

I wanted the corset to be 4 panels that were all the same. So, I only made one panel on the pattern paper and when it came time to cut the fabric out I just folded my fabric into 4 layers and cut it all at once. This is what my pattern for the corset looked like:

SKIRT

Elsa’s skirt is very shimmery and it fades from a light blue at the top to darker blue at the bottom. I really wanted the skirt that we made to do this as well, but I wasn’t expecting to find anything like that. So I decided that I would just find a pretty light blue fabric and make the skirt all one color. When I got to Joann’s, however, I looked through every blue fabric they had and found an "ombre blue" chiffon fabric. It was perfect (but really hard to work with)!! It was sheer, though, so I needed a fabric to go underneath it. For this I used a Tahitian blue cotton material called Legacy Solids. I originally was going to use this Tahitian blue material for the corset too, but ended up going with something else. The ombre chiffon was normally $12.99 per yard, but it was on sale for $6.49 per yard, and I bought 3/4 yards. I also bought 3 yards of the Tahitian blue fabric at $1.99 per yard. 

Next I traced the patterns onto the fabric and cut them all out.

Instead of sewing the chiffon to the cotton material first, I pinned the chiffon to the cotton then sewed the panels together like that. Then I sewed the top seam of the skirt and the bottom seam all together so I would have a nice line.

Elsa has a pretty big slit on the right side of her skirt, so I wanted to include that in our dress. Kayla is only 4, though, so I did a more modest slit. To do this, I marked how far I wanted the slit to go up then sewed the seam where the right side panel and the front panel connect from top to bottom. I did not sew all the way to the bottom of the skirt, though (once I got to my mark I stopped sewing). Next, I took the fabric on each side of the seam and folded it under to make a little slit. I didn’t want any stitching to show here so I sewed the chiffon and cotton together at the very ends then used a no sew bonding fabric to hold it folded back.

For the back of the skirt, I decided that I wanted it to lace up to allow Kayla to wear it a little longer. I did the same thing for the back that I did with the slit, but I did not fold the edges back as far.

I made a waistband out of some of the left over fabric that I used for the corset and sewed that on to the top of the skirt. Next I used eyelet and snap fastener pliers and some snap fasteners and laced a ribbon through it.

I was very happy with the finished product, but I felt like it was still missing something. Elsa’s dress is very sparkly, which is one of the reasons my daughter loves it so much. While I wasn’t able to find a sparkly fabric that I liked enough to use, I did find some permanent sparkly fabric spray.

Once the skirt was all done, I laid some newspaper out and sprayed the front of the skirt, let it dry for about 30 minutes then sprayed the back. This gave it the perfect finishing touch.

It took about 3-4 hours to make the skirt.

Corset

The corset was very easy to make. I used a poly cotton blend from Joann’s called Symphony in Aruba blue. I bought ½ yard at $3.99 per yard.  I folded the fabric into 4 layers, traced the pattern on the top layer and cut all 4 pieces out at once. Next I sewed the two front pieces together, and then added the sides.

I am not sure if I’m going to have the corset lace up the back or close with Velcro. I’m leaning more towards Velcro since it would be easier for Kayla, but I will make the final decision once I add the sheer part on top and the sleeves (there will be another post on the finished top).

I also sprayed this fabric with the glitter and once it is finished I plan on adding some jewels to make it a little more flashy for Kayla. I was thinking something like this:

It took a little under 1 hour to make the corset

I will do another post on this once I finish it though. Next will be the top of the corset and the sleeves! But for now, here is what he have:

(The skirt does not have the sparkly spray paint in this picture)