Pink and Sparkly

You might remember the pink & brown princess dress that I made for my niece Kate for Halloween two years ago. She wore it for dress up quite a bit, and so it got a good amount of wear for a costume. Good thing, since it literally took hours to make it up! It doesn't fit her anymore, but she wanted to dress up as a princess again for Halloween this year. She found a really beautiful pink and silver princess dress costume with a white and pink fur cape in a kids clothing catalog that her mom got. The kid is clearly well trained, because instead of asking her mom to buy it for her, she asked me to sew her another princess dress just like the one in the catalog. With the white fur cape, please! You know where this is going, right? ;) Good thing Halloween is one of my favorite holidays.



Here's a picture of the dress she wanted, from the Chasing Fireflies catalog.





First Kate and I went to the fabric store and bought some sparkly pink polyester costume material. I generally refuse to sew with anything poly, but this was only a costume. I have to say, it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it could have been although it did fray like crazy. I ended up ironing woven interfacing to all the bodice pieces and underlining the silvery bits in silk organza (I know. Really.) to sort of keep things kind of under control.

This weekend it was construction time! I looked through old BWOFs over breakfast because I remembered one of them had a girl's cape pattern.





Pattern and material all ready to start





Yes, go ahead and laugh at my pattern weights. I knew what pain I was in for, sewing icky costume poly into a complicated dress!





Here is the bodice, which took a LONG time to make. I started the costume at 10 AM, and this photo was taken just before 4 PM. So the glittery trim is from MJ Trim in the city and cost more than the whole rest of the dress put together. However, I only bought a yard of it and it really does help make the whole thing a little fancier.





I did have a few tea breaks during the construction process.





The skirt went much faster in comparison. I machine basted the organza to silvery stuff and stitched the whole thing together, then gathered and attached to the bodice. The best part? I talked my mom into hemming this behemouth. ;) yay!





And the cape was even easier - 45 minutes from pulling the pattern sheets out of the magazine to hand sewing the opening at the neck where I flipped the cape right side out after stitching it up. It's BWOF 10-2008-138.





Kate's mom marked the hem and made a few adjustments. The pattern ended up being REALLY low cut, but she'll have a turtleneck on under it... so it should be OK.





And here we are, 8 hours of work later, a 7 year old fairy princess with a serious couture habit who knows how to talk her aunt into making fancy dresses to her exact specifications. ;)