Refashion Friday: Bridesmaid's Dress to Princess Dress

Err, for some reason it's taken me over nine months to blog about this creation. I'm not sure why: it took a freaking lot of work and it's seen lots of use, so it's definitely a success that I'm proud of. Maybe it's because it took me a while to get any half-decent 'modelled' shots, and then it kept getting bumped down the ' to blog about' list in favour of more recent projects. Anyway, today I'm going to do a bit of house-keeping and get this crazy project 'out there'. 

Like many a mistaken mother before me, I thought I could prevent my daughter from developing a princess obsession just by avoiding certain books and banning Disney our my home. FAIL. Like so many other little girls, Dolores fell in love with the idea of princesses at some point before her third birthday and desperately wanted to dress up like one. I didn't see the point in trying to ignore or avoid this desire, and instead of sourcing some mass-produced piece of tat that will look shonky after a few wears and washes, I though at least I could rustle up a dress that's unique and well-made. 

'Before' garment:

Rather than fork out a small fortune in the shimmery/frou-frou section of a fabric shop, I decided to find a pre-loved garment from which I could harvest the materials I would need. This bridesmaid's dress, found in a charity shop for £9.99, seemed to fit the bill nicely. After its dissection, the full skirt of this size 16 dress provided a lot of shot taffeta fabric, plus I thought the netting in the underskirt might come in handy. I chose a taffeta dress because I hoped the fabric would hold its shape without the need for extra layers of underskirt, which would be a pain to sew, and possibly annoying to wear. I also liked that there were lots of tiny bugle beads and two fabric roses around the waist that I also thought I might be able to reuse (I didn't end up using the beads in the remake). Oh, and its final plus-point was that it was on the pink spectrum, without being too pink.

Pattern:

Ironically, in a bid to avoid Disney merchandise, I turned to a Disney sewing pattern: Simplicity 2563. It was generously sent to me by the lovely Adey from The Sew Convert, along with some other patterns, when her daughter became older than the largest size. (You can see a whole load of sewing stuff I was generously donated when my little girl was tiny here.) I picked the pattern's design elements that were most suitable for my fabric, including those poofy side things from the 'Cinderella' dress that I figured would make the most of that double layered under-netting.

I know I was making this dress for Dolores's third birthday, but I can't remember if I chose the size 3 or 4 (and I'm NOT prepared to wake Frankie up by going into my bedroom to hunt out the pattern to check!). Either way, I don't think the neckline should have resulted in such a deep scoop. It ended up looking totally different to the dresses on the front of the pattern envelope, like those samples were made from a different pattern entirely. As you can see in the picture above, Dolores often wore it with a vest on underneath, which kind of spoilt the effect, but she didn't seem to notice or mind. Now that she's almost four, the scoop thankfully doesn't look so inappropriately 'scoopy'.

Thoughts:

I decided not to bore you with interior shots, but you're going to have to trust me that this dress was A LOT of work. Well, it certainly felt a lot of work to this then-third-trimester preggers lady. Since its completion, I've gone back and shortened it to make it less of a trip hazard, plus I mended the hand-picked zip which came away during some particularly vigorous princessing. Aside from that, it's withstood a lot of wears, and of course a lot of washes. Over nine months later, Dolores still likes to wear it regularly, including to the library (see pic at top of post!).

Cost:

Thrifted bridesmaid's dress: £9.99
Pattern: £0 (gift)
Zip: £0 (from my stash)
Total: £9.99

Refashion Friday: Leopard Coat to Leopard Costume

I nearly got rid of this ropey old coat about 300 hundred times, but something kept stopping me. Turns out that 'something' was the need to make it into a child's fancy dress costume....

Pattern:

The owner of Sewabaloo contacted me last autumn to see if I was interested in trying out a pattern for free. Yes, I was interested. They currently have this animal costume pattern and a dress/top pattern available. I went for the animal one as I don't have anything like this in my stash at present and thought it'd be fun to be pushed outside of my sewing comfort zone a bit. 

This PDF pattern comes in three sizes (S, M and L) which is meant to span from 2 years old to 10. The cover illustration (pictured above) is adorbs and the instructions and step-by-step diagrams are clear. Thankfully, there's some useful tips included about how to cut and sew with faux fur if, like me, you haven't tackled it before. There were, however, a couple of things missing IMO. On the front pattern piece there is no CF indication so it was unclear how much the front pieces should overlap. It was also difficult to tell where the front edge of the hood should meet with the neck edge of the front pieces. Not massive issues by any means, especially for a fancy dress garment, but I personally would have preferred that they be included.

In the list of notions needed, 'sew-on hook and loop fastener tape' (or optional velcro) is mentioned. However, there was no mention in the instructions of how any fastenings should be applied, nor any indication on the pattern pieces as to where. I brought this point up and the instructions have since been edited to include information about applying velcro. I used large sew-on press studs in the end because I had some in my stash. 

I choose to make the cat version because of the leopard fabric (coat) I had to work with, and I made the tops of the ears a little less pointy. I ended up omitting the contrast tummy panels, inner ear panels and tail tip because the only solid coloured faux fur I could find in my town looked terrible with the leopard print's shades. 

In general, the construction of this pattern was simple, especially if you choose to make it in fleece or felt I'd imagine. Man, it's hard to sew several layers of faux fur! The ears and tail are applied by sandwiching them in-between a seam, but two broken machine needles later, I realised I had no choice but to hand stitch everything together at these points. Having done that, I then took a look at the hood. The ears were RIDICULOUSLY big. In this pattern, the ears and tail pattern pieces are not graded for the different sizes, so you make the same ones for a two year old or a ten year old. I was cutting it fine making this close to Christmas, so I was super reluctant to get out my seam ripper. But honestly the ears made it look more like a hyena rather than any type of cat, so I was forced to rip out the ears. I trimmed them down considerably, and re-stitched the ears and hood seams together whilst swearing a bit.

Fabric:

I bought this vintage faux fur leopard print coat (pictured below) for £25 via eBay three winter's ago. It had looked pretty good in the photos, but when it arrived I found that is was in wayyyy worse condition than the listing would have you (me) believe. But I had just given birth and was trying to cope with life with a tiny new baby and didn't have the headspace for making any kind of complaint. I wore it that winter because I didn't have anything else nor the spare funds to get another coat. Then at the beginning of last winter, I scored the faux fur jacket from a charity shop at the bottom of this post, and the ropey leopard one went to live in the cupboard under the stairs. 

When I got this pattern, I was excited to finally extract and repurpose this coat. It took a couple of episodes of Narcos to unpick all the seams to get to all the usable fabric. It was fun to discover that a lot of the coat had been stitched by hand, and with no labels at all, I can only assume that it had been home made back in the 70s or something. The costume's pattern pieces just fitted on to the harvested faux fur.

Aside from learning that sewing through several layers of the stuff is extremely tricky, I also learnt that cutting and working with it covers you in fluff that sticks to your clothes and gets up your nose. I was relieved to finally stitch up the inside side seams which meant the raw edges were finally enclosed. I will not be sewing with faux fur again any time soon. 

Thoughts:

I can't lie, the outcome is cute. But the journey to cute wasn't as fun as I had hoped: partly because of my pre-Christmas time pressures, partly because of the difficulties of working with faux fur, and partly because of the pattern flaws. It's come out super big, so I think Dolores will be using this for several years to come if she wishes. 

Cost:

Pattern: £0 in exchange for a review (it can be bought here for £8)

Outer fabric: £0 (I'm counting this as zero because I already got a season's worth of use from the coat)

Lining: £3.75-ish for a metre of brown poly-cotton

Notions: thread and press studs from my stash

Total: £3.75-ish