Lady É :: mostly a costuming blog ::

2008-03-29T12:19:00.000-07:00

I finally realized that I need to get in gear as soon as possible if I'm going to make even one costume for Prince Caspian. Right now my plan is Susan's purple dress for myself. Though I love Lucy's red dress, I figured I would costume as her for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and this was one of my last chances at being Susan. Plus, I'm closer to Susan's age, and my hair's right, I just need some kind of temporary darkening wash.

Bought the first pattern, McCall's 4107, as a base for the bodice. It laces up the front or sides but that's relatively easy to remove. The princess seams are shaped right (though I'll be adding the many different side seams), it has the start of a peplum, it has a pointed waist, and it's a relatively small pattern and cheap, particularly with the sale Hancock Fabrics had.

The other one I want and didn't get is Butterick 4452, for the back lacing and the skirt. I'll wait until after April 3 for that, for yet another sale.

Now to clean up my sewing area. It was moved from its nice set-up in the finished basement to the finished attic—with benevolent intentions, I'm sure—but now it's an obstacle course to reach the sewing machine to repair the slightest tear, much less make a costume.

2008-02-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

Note the updates in the post below! Costumer's Guide came across some other images that have great close-ups of the fabric. Why can't I have images of this quality for Narnia costumes?

2008-01-18T14:20:00.000-08:00

Robert: Where did you get that?

Giselle: I made it. Do you like it?
(Robert, flabbergasted, comes into the living room
and sees the dress pattern pieces cut into the drapes)
Giselle: You're unhappy...?
Robert: You made a dress out of my curtains!?
Giselle: Oh, you are unhappy!

This dress is definitely my favorite from Enchanted. I partly relieved my costuming muse this dress inspired by allowing it to influence the design on my sister's birthday cake recently. Not exact, but cute, isn't it?

Here's the breakdown I wrote. My resources include the aforementioned Costumer's Guide photobucket, (NEW 2/2/08: there are some great new high-res images there now. A few new details have been added throughout this entry) plus this image and this image that I found that she doesn't have, and the YouTube Central Park video. With all the hoopla about the enormous white wedding dress, this dress isn't mentioned in any interviews I've seen.

Enchanted:
Giselle's Blue Central Park Dress

Fabric
The pale aqua teal dress looks to me like ~~a silk crepe de chine. It doesn't have much sheen to it like a charmeuse,~~ ... images new to me show some great close-ups of the fabric. It's lightweight, with a fine wrinkled surface and a slight luster. It looks familiar to me somehow. At least, I would say from this image and this image it definitely looks like a silk of some kind. Perhaps a silk matelasse, with a crinkly webby pattern?

The embroidery all over the dress is made up of large pale yellow flowers, both in a traditional 5-petal-with-a-round-center shape and some "profile" flowers that look like fans. Connecting these are swirling olive green stems and vines, with some small-fern like shapes in a slightly darker green. There are also some dark thin yellow-brown leaves, and white flowers 5-petal flowers with pink centers.

The last thing to mention about the embroidery needs a bit of background. If you've ever been to Disney World/Land with your eyes open, you'll know they incorporate "Hidden Mickeys"—that Mickey head shape of three circles: a head, and two ears—into just about anything they can and, of course, so that the secret doesn't remain a secret, publish books about where to find all of them. Quite a game.

Well, in the embroidery on this dress, what looks like clusters of pink flowers from a distance are clearly Hidden Mickeys. They're outlined with pink and filled in with a much lighter pink; you can see them particularly well at the bodice, but also sprinkled throughout the body of the dress. They seem to be always attached to the pale green stems.

The underskirt is at least two layers of white chiffon on top, with at least one layer of pink chiffon below that. There's probably an opaque satin layer somewhere underneath this.

There's also teal chiffon underneath the teal skirt, and a layer of teal satin below that. In this image it looks very much like the teal satin is baglined to the hem, and from this one that it's also baglined to the front opening, and that the satin is the innermost layer, but then where did the loose, non-attached chiffon in this image go?

You can see the dress layers particularly well in these images:

On the Rock

Twirling

Dancing with the Crowd

Skipping, Hands Clasped

In the last one you can see the pink layer through the two white layers.

Cut/Construction
If anyone has the shot that shows the full pattern hanging in the curtains, let me know! Hopefully they went for accuracy there. There's a partial view of it in this image, but I can't make much of it out.

The neckline is a sweetheart, with a separate piece for each bust cup. ~~Looks like there might be a dart on each bust piece, running diagonally down from the underarm, but it's subtle and hard to spot because of the embroidery.~~ xfkirsten on the Cosplay topic on Enchanted has a high-res Enchanted calendar, with some high-res images of this dress that show princess-seams on the bust that curve from the underarm, not darts. You can see the bust cup under the dress in this image. Also in that image, you can see the teal satin, which makes me think the bodice is fully lined.

You often you can't see the inverted-V waist seam, because the teal sash wrapping around it follows the seamline. The sleeve is a puff, (with elastic?) sewn to the curve of the dress at the underarm.

The back is a low scoop, with a center back seam that may be an invisible zipper.

The skirt is quite full, particularly at the back, where it trains a little bit. Definitely seems to be two front panels and probably two back. The underskirt is probably stitched to the dress at the waist seam.

Trimming/Finishing
The neck is edged in a teal satin ruching and a ~~thin white scalloped eyelet lace~~ fine scalloped lace, possibly two layers. The opening is edged in scalloped white eyelet lace and pink piping. All layers of the underskirt are lettuce-hemmed. There's a sprig of pink silk blossoms tacked down at the center dip of the neckline, with two smaller sprigs or maybe rosettes at each upper corner of the neck where it joins the sleeves.

The teal satin sash is slightly darker than the dress fabric, following the waist line but sometimes not covering it, which suggests that it's not sewn down, tied in a bow at the front with one hanging sash end longer than the other, the shorter hanging past the knees, the longer at the lower calf.

Shoes and Hair
Her calf-high white lace-up heeled shoes look very much like Victorian-era walking boots, like the pair at the top of the page here. She wears white hose I believe. Her hair is parted on the left, pulled back and twisted into a half-up, half-down style, tightly curled and waving, and decorated with pink silk flowers and green, pink and lavender ribbons.

2008-01-15T14:28:00.001-08:00

I think I'll just jump right in and not introduce myself. Besides, I can't think of anything credibly original at the moment, or even anything that's a clever spin on anything unoriginal.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young tech-savvy sewist must be in want of a blog..."?
"Last night I dreamt I went to the fabric store again..."?
"It was the best of patterns, it was the worst of patterns..."?
"There was no possibility of taking the seams in that day..."?
"This is a story of what Woman's patience can endure, and what Singer's patience can achieve..."?

Well, those aren't bad exactly. All right, here I'll be chronicling my Narnian costume(s?) when and if I start them—I am a bit time crunched this semester. That's about it.

I want to attempt to start experimenting with fun foam this weekend and try for a brigandine like Prince Caspian's. (Yes, that's my page, thank you.) But I'm thinking I may be able to best replicate it if I make as if it were overlapping scale armor, rather than leather lined with overlapping plates. I plan on cutting out the right size pieces and punching holes through them, glueing them to a pleather or vinyl tunic also punched in the right places, with small silver brads applied through each hole. The other side, then, with the brad arms, might be just a bit painful, so I'll probably line it with the same cloth. And then, of course, the fun foam would need to be painted that dark grayish green color.

That's the plan.

For now, I'm just loving looking at pictures of this dress from Enchanted: isn't it adorable?

See more images of it at Maggie's Photobucket (Costumer's Guide). I wonder if this is possibly the only film dress where the movie clearly shows the dress pattern pieces, all laid out quite nicely. If you've seen Enchanted, you'll know what I'm talking about. We only got a quick glimpse at them, but I can't wait to see a full image of that shot!

I may post a breakdown of it this week, just for fun; though I'd love to make it for myself or more likely my younger sister, I don't have any time.

2006-05-11T12:30:00.000-07:00

Under construction...