Finished Elsa Gown

Finally finished my Elsa Gown, which was a lot more trouble than it was worth, and which reaffirmed to me once again the tremendous importance of "ease of use" when it comes to fabric selection. Sequined lycra is 100% off my list of future fabric choices. Practically killed my machine. It's worse than leather. Anyway, I managed to finish what I needed to. Hemmed the sleeves and neckline, installed a zipper in the back of the dress, finished the eyelets for the bodice, and embroidered the train. 

Finished product, modeled by my long-suffering younger sister, Charity. 

I don't really like how the top portion turned out, and if I were to do it over again, I'd choose a sequined fabric for the bodice and leave it at that. The craft foam, while interesting, simply doesn't provide the professional, polished look I strive toward. Also, I'd choose a different fabric for the sleeves and neckline. The sequined lycra is absolutely awful to work with, as you may have already gathered. I do, however, like how the train turned out. 

The embroidery is gorgeous, and the jeweled rhinestones I added were the icing on the cake. I was going to do more snowflakes, but in the end, I decided to keep it simple. It was challenging embroidering on the sheer fabric, but the end product was surprisingly ethereal, like snowflakes floating in the blue sky. 

My room is kind of in chaos right now, since I'm in the process of reorganizing everything. I've come to the conclusion that I have too many supplies and materials that are inaccessible, and the volume of stuff I have out is making the room look cluttered. So my next few projects are going to be of an organizational nature, and should help in using up a lot of the very specific items I have. Expect posts on repurposing sweaters, and making cloaks. Not necessarily in that order. 

Elsa Queen Gown Spoilers

Sorry for lack of updates lately. Been pretty swamped with work and generally exhausting housekeeping tasks. I have had time, however to indulge in a bit of fun in the form of recreating Queen Elsa's dress from Frozen. Only lately saw the movie, despite having its ubiquitous "Let it Go" song played ad nauseam in my (and everyone else I know's) houses. 

In short (because I'm exhausted), I saw the dress, liked it, and decided to have a go at recreating it. Bought my fabric at Wal-Mart, with the exception of the cape fabric, which was purchased from Joann's. 

Here's what the dress looks like right now. It's far from finished, but it's beginning to look pretty good. The bodice, in particular, still needs a lot of attention. 

I really had a lot of fun with this dress, actually. It was relatively easy, despite not having a pattern (I cobbled together the various elements from several patterns in my collection, and modified them as necessary. I also added three godets to the back of both skirts to create a kind of "flowing water" effect; it's hard to see in these pictures, but it looks really cool.

The bodice was unusual, in that I utilized a medium I don't often use: craft foam. All those "scaley" things on the front are cut, individually, from craft foam, glued on, and painted. I've only finished the front thus far, which isn't actually done. Still have more painting and decoupaging to do, and I need to have the scales at the top go all the way up to cover the fabric beneath. 

The other major things I still have yet to do are the ombré dyeing of the lower portion of the skirt (I'll be doing it in a blue to match the cape, which will look incredible), and I need to embroider a bunch of snowflakes on the cape. Already found my patterns, so that'll be cake when it's time. 

In a few days, I'll have the finished project (it was supposed to be a one-day thing, but I decided to put more time into it), as well as my nearly-finished Thorin cape with fur mantle. 

One other bit of news: just got the leather for Thorin's coat (the one he wears throughout most of the first and second movie), and a raccoon-fur coat to use for the mantle and trim. It's going to do nicely, I think. A lot better than vinyl and faux fur, that's for sure.