glasscannon
Active Member
This is my first build thread, so let me know if I'm going about this wrong or if there's anything I could do to improve the thread itself -- within reason of course, as I'm into full-on DragonCon-is-almost-here freak out mode.
So a few weeks back, with five weeks to go until DragonCon, I decided that I absolutely had to have a River Song costume this year, and narrowed down on the dress she wears in Day Of The Moon, A Good Man Goes To War, etc:
I gathered a bunch of reference pics and read up on it, and found out that the screen-used costume was a dress from AllSaints that is now out of production -- and wouldn't have fit me even if I could get ahold of it. But it didn't look like it would be outside my sewing abilities, so after a few sketches I launched into a muslin mock-up.
(Pardon the terrible mirror pic.) For the mock-up I started with a princess seamed muslin I'd previously fit to my figure, then drafted in an extra panel on the side (for a total of 10 panels) and added a curved drop waist. The skirt is 11 panels that I drafted from scratch, using the curved waistline of the bodice and the length of the adjoining skirt panel to draft each. The skirt ended up being about equivalent to 3 full circles (or, say, a heavily gored full circle skirt). I've changed the front hemline since this picture, and managed to work out all the various fit and construction issues on this mock-up, so I was able to launch right into the real fabric without having to re-fit or spend time figuring out construction.
The screen-used belt was also from AllSaints, and while I'm keeping an eye out for one on Ebay (and may hand-make one in the future, but not for DragonCon this year), in the meantime I'm using a cheapy from WetSeal that I thought had a similar feeling.
With the mock-up finished, I picked half of it apart to use as a pattern and launched into the final fabric. I decided to go with an olive green polyester suiting -- poly so it won't wrinkle during the con (I've seen other builds of this dress where they used linen for some reason, wrinkles horribly) and because I thought the drape and sheen were similar to the original (nylon, I think?) dress's fabric. The screen-used dress is a bit of a difficult one to nail the color down on. AllSaints lists the color as taupe, and I have screenshots where it looks tan, others were it looks gray, and a bunch where it looks olive green, just depending on the lighting. Green looks better on me than tan or gray, so I went with that.
I hand-dyed the zippers to match (well, complement anyway), and for future reference, RIT dye does exactly nothing on zippers, but iDyePoly on stovetop does wonders. The three zipper pockets (two on the front of the skirt, one at the low back of the bodice) are all functional, and the front two are big enough to stash my DragonCon badge in for pictures, along with my phone, keycard, etc.
Since this picture I've sewn the bodice together and flatfelled and topstitched each of the seams. Today I'm draping the back collar and finishing the armscyes, then turning the waistline under so it's ready to attach to the skirt. Less than two weeks left to go until DragonCon, so here's hoping I can get it done in time! I'll post more pictures and updates as I have them, and I'd love to hear what you guys think!
So a few weeks back, with five weeks to go until DragonCon, I decided that I absolutely had to have a River Song costume this year, and narrowed down on the dress she wears in Day Of The Moon, A Good Man Goes To War, etc:
I gathered a bunch of reference pics and read up on it, and found out that the screen-used costume was a dress from AllSaints that is now out of production -- and wouldn't have fit me even if I could get ahold of it. But it didn't look like it would be outside my sewing abilities, so after a few sketches I launched into a muslin mock-up.
(Pardon the terrible mirror pic.) For the mock-up I started with a princess seamed muslin I'd previously fit to my figure, then drafted in an extra panel on the side (for a total of 10 panels) and added a curved drop waist. The skirt is 11 panels that I drafted from scratch, using the curved waistline of the bodice and the length of the adjoining skirt panel to draft each. The skirt ended up being about equivalent to 3 full circles (or, say, a heavily gored full circle skirt). I've changed the front hemline since this picture, and managed to work out all the various fit and construction issues on this mock-up, so I was able to launch right into the real fabric without having to re-fit or spend time figuring out construction.
The screen-used belt was also from AllSaints, and while I'm keeping an eye out for one on Ebay (and may hand-make one in the future, but not for DragonCon this year), in the meantime I'm using a cheapy from WetSeal that I thought had a similar feeling.
With the mock-up finished, I picked half of it apart to use as a pattern and launched into the final fabric. I decided to go with an olive green polyester suiting -- poly so it won't wrinkle during the con (I've seen other builds of this dress where they used linen for some reason, wrinkles horribly) and because I thought the drape and sheen were similar to the original (nylon, I think?) dress's fabric. The screen-used dress is a bit of a difficult one to nail the color down on. AllSaints lists the color as taupe, and I have screenshots where it looks tan, others were it looks gray, and a bunch where it looks olive green, just depending on the lighting. Green looks better on me than tan or gray, so I went with that.
I hand-dyed the zippers to match (well, complement anyway), and for future reference, RIT dye does exactly nothing on zippers, but iDyePoly on stovetop does wonders. The three zipper pockets (two on the front of the skirt, one at the low back of the bodice) are all functional, and the front two are big enough to stash my DragonCon badge in for pictures, along with my phone, keycard, etc.
Since this picture I've sewn the bodice together and flatfelled and topstitched each of the seams. Today I'm draping the back collar and finishing the armscyes, then turning the waistline under so it's ready to attach to the skirt. Less than two weeks left to go until DragonCon, so here's hoping I can get it done in time! I'll post more pictures and updates as I have them, and I'd love to hear what you guys think!