Right now I'm working on Giselle's curtain dress from Disney's Enchanted. I have been posting my work in progress on my Facebook page, and as I've been going I have had quite a few questions. So I decided to use my blog to talk about what I'm working on, giving tips along the way. Think of it as a geeky version of Julie/Julia!
And now onto Giselle!
Pattern: McCall's 6030
Fabrics: Joann's silkessence in light aqua (sorry I don't know the color name, they were out when I went back) and tile blue white chiffon, pink lining--three yards each
Notions: Aqua ribbon, white eyelet lace, teal ruffle trim, elastic, teal 14 in zip, pink cord trim, pink flowers.
Other materials: Delta Creamcoat textile medium, acrylic paint
I have been in love with this dress since I first saw the film back in college, so I was very excited to start this project. I spent about a month doing my research on this dress, from fabric to pattern. Surprisingly, the pattern was the easy part, it was the fabric that really was a problem. I chose McCall's 6030 as my base pattern, which needed very little altering. I spent hours scouring the net looking for teal or aqua fabric that would match closely to the fabric used on the screen worn dress. I wanted to tare my hair out, as I don't usually chose costumes that has a pattern to it, and I was reminded once again why lol. After not finding what I wanted, I saw that Spoonflower had a version of the fabric. After doing the math on how much it was going to cost me, I decided not to go that route, however, if you are interested in purchasing it, it can be found here.
Finally, I came upon this lovely costumer on DiviantArt, FlowerPowerStock. She had hand painted the dress using puffy paint. I was not a fan of the puffy paint, but I loved the look of her pattern. She too had used the same pattern as I was using, but she did not alter it. She had posted the pattern she had used, which looked great. I decided that I was going to dive in and actually paint the dress, using acrylic paints with textile medium mixed in.
Next, after saving my money, I was off to Joann's Fabrics. They had an awesome fabric on sale that was very close to not only the color of the original dress, but also the texture, which had a lightly crinkled feel. The under skirts are deceiving I discovered thanks to Lady Eowyn's blog. It's not strictly white as it appears, but white chiffon over pink chiffon. I was able to to find white at Joann's (which is ridiculously over priced I discovered) but not pink. Turns out that Joann's if phasing out many of their costume fabrics I was told, which is unfortunate and may find me back on Ebay ordering my fabric in the future. So instead of pink chiffon, I opted for a simple light pink lining, which looked lovely under the white. I also picked up most of my notions there save the white eyelet trim for the overskirt, which I opted to purchase on Ebay, as I found a closer match on there. The teal ruffle was purchased over at Hobby Lobby, which I'm fortunate enough to have in the same shopping complex lol.
Before I got to anything else, I FINALLY ordered a dress form for myself, as I knew I would want to make a mock up for this dress, which it turns out was a good idea. I had bought the pattern in a larger size so that I could alter it as needed. The pattern called for rather straight seams on the bust, so I curved them more toward the armpit. The original pattern also made the very front of the bodice one piece, so I placed a seam in the center for more screen accuracy. Next, I elongated the pattern to compensate for my bustiness, and to create the inward V shape, a the original pattern ha a straight Empire waist. Once I was done creating my mock up, I laid out the pattern on the aqua fabric and cut. I also made sure that the top of the front of the overskirt was shaped correctly when cutting to compensate for the new design of the bodice. 
After I had cut my fabric, I used the scraps to experiment with. I had already cut out my stencils out of cardstock and covered them with wax to make them repel the paint a wee bit (which by the way, isn't the best way to do this. I HIGHLY recommend that you either by Wax Resist and paint in on your stencil or invest in stencil film. I have a hand painted shirt business and will be purchasing the stencil film to replace the cardstock versions of my stencils.) In my experimentation, I discovered that the paint could bleed very easily if improperly applied. Usually, I would have used sponge brushes for this, but I'm really glad I took the time to really play with the fabric. After it bled, I tried tracing with pen, then painting, but the pen just showed through. I next tried pencil, and that did the same, followed by coloured pencil, thinking that by matching the colour to the paint it would be masked. The result looked lovely, but when I tried washing it, the paint came right off, so that was a no go. Finally I went back to just using the stencil as I had originally intended. I used a very small hard bristle stencil brush with very little paint at a time (called dry bushing) and this worked the best. After the stencil was applied, I went back and hand painted over much over it, so that the lines were crisper. Certain colours such as the light pink, and yellow needed several layers to show up correctly, which really made this a time consuming process.
Now, let's talk about paints! The colours on the dress are deceiving. After painting all the pieces for the bodice, I discovered that the white for the flowers was far more vibrant that it should have been, standing out like a sore thumb! So I dulled it down with a cobalt blue, so the flowers are actually a very, very light blue, even though they appear pure white on the dress. The same issue was apparent with the large yellow flowers. I had originally chose a lovely antique yellow, but when painted on, it was far to vibrant. So I dulled it down with orange. That still wasn't quite right, still standing too far out. However, when I added a hint of sage green, the colour was perfect!
I placed my stencil on the pieces to try to accurately replicate the placement of the pattern on the screen worn dress. After I was done painting I discovered that my stencil is slightly smaller than the actual pattern. I'm not too worried about it, but if you are striving for complete accuracy, then I would recommend sizing up the stencil a wee bit, by half an inch at least.
Before I moved onto painting then overskirt, I stitched together the bodice, which was a bit tricky. First I had to stitch together the lining. I had underestimated how much fabric I was going to need originally, so I had to run back to Joann's and buy a half a yard more for the bodice lining. I accidentally grabbed the wrong shade of fabric (tile blue) which was darker than the fabric I was using. I kicked myself when I got home, but moved on, knowing that no one was going to see it lol. After stitching that together, I used a thick interfacing to put between the layers. The original pattern called for boning, but I opted for this as I knew it would be more comfortable. I made it slightly smaller than the lining and the bodice so that it would slide right in between the layers.
Next I got to the exciting part! I stitched up the bodice front, which really looked great when I was done. Then I moved onto piecing together the sleeves and the trim to attach to the bodice.
Before I worked on the sleeves, I stitched the the ruffles eyelet trim to the bodice. Now looking at the photos of the screen worn dress, I discovered that there are actually two layers of eyelet trim on the bodice, one at the same level as the ruffles, and another higher above the ruffles in the back.
The sleeves were tricky, because they didn't allow for attaching an elastic. So I used some remnants of the pink fabric, which had already been cut for the underskirt, to encase the elastic to attach to the inside of the sleeve. with right sides together, I stitched the lining, elastic casing and outter fabric together. I then followed the directions that the pattern called for. I pulled the elastic tight to fight my arms, then stitched the elastic and trimmed it. When turning the sleeve right side out to attach it to the bodice, I had to manipulate the sleeve in a weird way to hide the seam stitching, and I can't really explain how I did it lol. However I left a hole so that I could attach it to the bodice and add more elastic. I hand tacked the the sleeve long the edge to keep the elastic from moving in the sleeve at the top. I tightened the elastic after pinning it to the bodice. This adding a wee bit of gathers in places, just like the screen worn dress.
After all that, stitched the whole thing to the lining. I then placed the thick interfacing inside betweenNext I moved on to painting the over skirt.
I placed my stencil as close as I could approximate to the original dress. From there, I created a repeating pattern, similar to that of actual fabric or wallpaper. This took about two days (with lots of interruptions to play with my son and do housework lol).
So that's where I have left off for now. I'll be posting more as I go! If you have any questions, please feel free to message me on my FB page Owl Feathers Cosplay
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