Complete! Cinderella 2015 Gown

This doesn't look like a difficult project, just a time consuming and massively expensive one involving massive amounts of fabric. Remind me I said this when I'm crying and sewing the week before DragonCon. I'm starting with the base layers first since they look like the most work/biggest time sinks.

Sandy Powell has said that multiple versions of every part of this costume were made, including the hoop skirts. One version of the hoops had handles and was used solely for the scene where she runs down the stairs so Lilly Evans could actually lift the dress to do so. That's pretty much the only picture of the bare hoop skirt I could find but it's helpful:


It looks like an elliptical with a wired crinoline on top? For my version, I bought this elliptical pattern and a vintage petticoat pattern that I intend to modify by bringing the yoke up a bit and adding much more volume.

Elliptical is from Truly Victorian #103
Petticoat is a Simplicity 3737

I cannot for the life of me find the reference, but I saw a picture once of a behind the scenes of a photoshoot that Lilly Evans was doing in the Cinderella dress and it looked like she was wearing the skirt with a corset boned in a completely different pattern. Oh, I lied, here's the picture:



I'm still a bit torn between whether to do a double layer corset with a pageant hook and eye closure covering the lacings or to make it two separate corsets. It's obvious from the refs that she's got two separate boning layers going on:



In the second one, with the good view of the bertha, you can see that there's only one layer, which makes me think it might be a boned fashion corset over an actual corset layer? There was another pic going around that had great backlighting on the bertha where you could see the corset also had off the shoulder straps. That will be fun.

Here's my fabric test for the corset:


Direct sunlight, no editing, about three layers of fabric. I think it might be too dark.

I just got all of my hoop supplies so I'll be working on that with progress pictures to come. I'll tackle the petticoat after, but I'm still waiting on around 100 yards of fabric to come in.

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I've got a the most time consuming part of the hoop skirt done, I think. Making the bag was a time sink. I used broadcloth and serged the seams, then zig zag stitched over them, as the pattern says, to keep the hoop steel from snagging. The directions were slightly confusing at one point on making the bag, but I figured it out. The directions also don't call for heat sealing the ends of the ribbons and the belt, but I highly suggest just running them over a candle flame or lighter to keep them from unravelling. The pattern says to just zig zag stitch, but eh, it can't hurt, right? I'd also recommend buying some heat shrink tubing for the the string ends and U tips for the hoop ends. They're not listed in the materials page of the pattern, but the directions call for the U-tips and if you're using string, why wouldn't you shrink tube the ends to make them easier to tie.

All that's left is cutting the bones and putting everything together. I'm going to use D-rings and velcro for the belt closure instead of a buckle, I think that will be just as sturdy with less bulk and a neat way to keep the belt tail from being an awkward bulge.

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Can't wait to see this completed!

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Thanks <3

Almost done with the hoop skirt. I just need to hand sew (ugh!) the hoops to the support ribbons.



Once the top hoops are added, the side back ribbons will be connected and the back won't be as wonky. I wanted to dye the casings to match the bag and ribbons, but they're 100% cotton and I was worried about the % shrinkage and didn't want to risk it. I'm kind of wish I had done it, now.


So heavy. And I only managed to sew down three support ribbons to the casings so far. It's taking vastly longer than I thought.

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While I'm waiting on the petticoat fabric to arrive, I got in fabric samples for the top layer of the skirt. The one on the left is obviously too blue, so I'm going with the one on the right. It's two tone so depending on how it's gathered or folded or how the light is hitting it, the color shifts from purple to blue.



I'm still a little torn, though. Silk gauze really matches the drape and flow of the dress. I might use it for the under layers of the top skirt, but it's so expensive to be used under when I could use a poly chiffon. Help? Experience?

Also! I came across this picture:



On the daily mail UK site. Apparently the stiff crinoline is reinforced and ruffles are sewn directly on to it. Then the petticoat layers go over it. I'm seriously considering adding this on for volume and fluff, but making it last in case I run out of time.

Also another pic that shows the base layers:

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I wish I could help but I have zero experience in these things. Enjoying the build though!

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My petticoat fabric is arriving tomorrow (finally!) and I decided to scrap my original petticoat idea. I bought this pattern:



Which is meant to go over the Truly Victorian elliptical hoops, and have altered it slightly for the petticoat layers and for the skirt layers. I haven't cut any material yet, but basically, what I did for the petticoat was retrace the pattern on my pattern paper (picture frame dust paper, very sturdy) and take off about seven inches from the bottom all the way around. I then cut out an eight inch ruffle piece from a separate pattern and will use that for the ruffles. I'm going to ignore the instructions to pleat the fabric and gather it instead.

For the actual skirt, I retraced the patter, but traced the front and side front pieces as one piece, then did the same with the side and side back pieces. I'll cut the second layer of the top skirt fabric out from this so there are less seams visible.

For the outer top skirt, I'm not cutting the curve into the bottom of the skirt pattern so I can double the number of pieces. Instead of 6.5 or so yards, it's going to be 13 yards in the topmost skirt layer for maximum gather and twirl. I left the bottoms of the pattern long and without curve so I can cut them once everything is assembled and on as I want the top skirt layers to be slightly longer than the petticoat layers.

I ended up going with eight different shades of blue, turquoise, and purple in crystal organza and an iridescent pearlized sheer to be used on the first petticoat layer with all the triangle inserts and ruffles. I happened to find this image:



Showing the top petticoat layer as a light purple! I ordered a poly chiffon for that and poly chiffon in varying shades of purple, turquoise and blue, and a white pearlized sheer for the ruffles.

Another image:



Was really helpful to me for color layering: purple cationic top layer, teal blue second layer, then pearlized sheer layer. I'm going to make the pearlized sheer layer part of the petticoat. I think this is logical because the iridescent layer isn't gathered into the folds, so doesn't seem to be a part of the "top" skirt.



If I had two more years and infinitely more patience, I would do it properly and have five or six layers of purple, blue and teal. But I'm not. So I won't.

I'm having enough trouble deciding between clear an aurora borealis skirt crystals.

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I don't think you can go wrong with either choice of crystal. Both will be beautiful. The Disney store doll gown uses the clear crystals.

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That's the same skirt pattern my friend used for my wedding dress! It's utterly gorgeous.

Also, this costumer did a spectacular version of this dress if you haven't already seen it. You'll have to dig around a bit for the progress pics since I don't think they're collected in a single album, but the amount of work that went into it is staggering! https://www.facebook.com/JoshuaHartDesign/

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Oh man, their costume is amazing! So many ruffles.

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Still alive! Still working on this. I have about seven projects in the air and frankly, organza is intimidating.



Just the first layer of the first petticoat. I had to rip out the waistband twice, regather it, then put in a new waistband of wide bias tape. Each seam is heat sealed, straight stitched, then reinforced with narrow fold bias tape in a zig zag stitch. Then turned over and zig zagged again. So this actually took a fair amount of time. Cutting this stuff was a nightmare. I ended up spray basting the pattern to the organza and laying it out on the carpet to keep it from shifting.

I'm thinking about bias taping the hem before adding the first ruffle layer on. I've got bulky nylon and pearl metallic thread for the rolled hem of the ruffles. I'll start working on those and the godets tomorrow.

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I spent an embarrassing amount of time perfecting my rolled hem for this using opalescent metallic thread and wooly nylon. In the end, I discovered the organza had to be folded over for the them to catch two layers and hold or else it would pull out. I do think using the wooly/bulky nylon helped and the opalescent is just pretty in person and when it catches the light.

Since this was just the bottom layer of the petti, I didn't add fishing wire, but for the ruffle layers, I'm definitely going to try that. I also spent an hour cutting one color of organza for the ruffle layers. Six more to go and I'm going to do the math tonight to figure out if I need to order more yardage.

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Remember when I said I would regret saying this was just a bunch of sewing? Yup. Eating those words.

First, I had to piece together the first ruffle layer. Two sets of six colors of organza fabric. This stuff shreds in your hands at the slightest touch. So I need a really sturdy seam, right?



I didn't cut off the selvedges, I zig zagged the selvedge ends together, then flipped the seam to one side and zig zagged again. This ended up being very sturdy but very, very bulky as you can see in the pic above, so not ideal for the material or the purpose. This became my practice ruffle instead of using scraps.

Next was the rolled hems. I used the same method as above (turning the end up, pressing it, then serging the material to itself) and for some reason, the hem kept falling out at the slightest touch. Adding ribbon was too bulky, water soluble stabilizer was out of the question, so I put this aside for a few days to think and came back to it. I don't know where I got the idea, probably born out of sheer laziness, but I flipped the knife up and over fed the fabric into the hem. Perfect rolled hem, very, very stable.



I'm going to use this method on the ruffle seams, too, in order to keep the bulk down.

Now was the problem of the fishing wire. My serger was having none of it. I tried it on my sewing machine with a rolled hem and the hem came out too big (this could be user error, but I adjusted the settings using the manual and a few youtube tuts). In the end I zig zagged over the fishing line, then turned the hem over the line and zig zagged the end.



There's something about it I don't like and the method seems overly complicated to me. I'm probably going to try serging the hem, then zig zagging the fishing line onto the hem or zig zagging it closer to the bottom so it kind of rolls itself into the hem with the fishing wire.

Also: using a rotary cutter to cut the millions of strips of fabric for the ruffles saved my life.

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Well I, for one, am really appreciating all your efforts on this.

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Fabulous! If I see you in this at Dragon, I will cry like a little girl. Seriously.

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What a work ! Can't wait to see the result !!!

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Thanks, ya'll. That's super encouraging!

I ended up remaking the ruffle using the no knife, over feeding technique and it ended up looking pretty good:



I used my gathering foot to attach the ruffle to the petti bottom. The gathering foot is pretty okay if you're decently ambidexterous or very, very patient. You have to kind of straighten the bottom fabric with one hand, while guiding the top fabric with the other so that was nerve wracking. I made super tight gathers, my tension was on 6, but I kept the stitch length at a 3 and fixed the thread every so often so one broken thread wouldn't kill my ruffle.



This is how ridiculous the ONE ruffle ended up being. I'm going to try and punt out the other nine ruffles out today/tomorrow, add the fishing line to the ruffle I have attached, then start on the godets. Once I'm sufficiently frustrated, I'll probably put this aside for a little while and work on something else.

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Got the first layer on, gathered, and fishing line in. I still need to police my thread on it. Hopefully now that I've got the hang of it, the next layer won't take so long. I might see how fishing line looks every other layer instead of every layer. BeforeI put the line in, I also curled it around a very small diameter metal pipe and heated it lightly with my blow dryer to make smaller curls, if you take it fresh off the spools, the curls will be a lot bigger. Since my ruffles are only like nine inches or so in diameter, I figured this might throw off the hem a bit, so smaller curls it is.

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I'm trying to get the foundation and petti layers done so I can start working on my Labyrinth dress for the D*Con Labyrinth ball. So. Probably update overload in here.



First godet layer and I should have cut these on the cross grain because they stretched and went wavy. I'm still using this layer. I need to sew the ruffle on, then sew the godet skirt to the foundation. Then make a million more of these.

For the godet layer, those are all (supposed to be) equilateral triangles, about 12 inches each side. Each layer is going to add 12" as it goes up. So 24" then 36" etc and staggered. I'm still on the fence on whether to use two foundations and put half the layers on each instead of all the layers on one. I'm going to see how the organza holds the weight as I put these first few layers on.

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I'm going to need a lot more fabric.