Finished project: Simplicity 1233 - Elsa dress from Frozen

Do you want to build a snowman?

I did finish Eva's Elsa costume several days before Halloween. Unfortunately, I never did get "good" pictures of her in her dress. I did, however, get a few cellphone pictures of her trick-or-treating at my office on Halloween:

Eva as Elsa

I talked a bit about the construction of this dress in a previous post, back when the dress lacked a yoke, sleeves, and a zipper. Seeing Eva's reaction to the glitter organza of the cape, I opted to use it for the yoke and sleeves, as well. The neckline appears to gape a bit, I think, due to the stiffness of the organza and the fact that the dress is slightly too large on her (as intended so that she could use it as a play dress in the coming months). I'd considered using a chiffon for the sleeves and yoke for comfort, but with my OCD toddler daughter, I decided instead to sacrifice slightly stiff and less comfortable chiffon for a more Elsa-like look with the organza.

Pattern drafting notes

I found the pattern to be well-drafted in that everything lined up as expected, and I didn't encounter any weird fit issues.

Fabric

• Cape: Glitter/snowflake organza from HelenEnoxFabrics on Etsy
• Bodice: Sequined fabric from JoAnn's.
• Skirt underlayer: Costume satin from JoAnn's. I also lined the bodice with this same fabric.
• Skirt overlayer: Iridescent organza from JoAnn's.

Pattern sizing and alterations

Height-wise, my daughter is on the cusp of size 2T/3 on the Big 4 size charts. I sewed a size 3 in this dress, knowing that it would be slightly big, but figuring that she'd be able to wear it to play dress-up for at least a few months after Halloween. Outside of the skirt/cape running very long, the dress fits true-to-size.

In the reviews of the equivalent McCall's pattern, I've seen people mentioning that there is a (fairly typical with the Big 4) large amount of excess ease. I did not find that to be the case with this pattern.

I also tapered the cape so that it didn't drag on the floor in front, but was left long in back, just like the "real" dress.

cape shot

Pattern instructions

I complain about the instructions for Big 4 patterns a lot, but these were actually quite good and suggest appropriate construction methods for the garment. For example, the instructions actually have you use French seams for Elsa's cape, which is intended to be made from a sheer fabric. I think that this is the first time that I've ever seen French seams mentioned in Big 4 pattern instructions, regardless of the recommended fabrics. The order of construction is logical, as well.

Another complaint that a lot of us have about Simplicity patterns is that the instructions jump around a lot when a pattern has more than one view. That's not the case with this pattern--the instructions for Elsa's dress and Anna's dress are kept completely separate.

Final thoughts

I enjoyed making this dress a lot more than I thought I would, and I'm ecstatic about how excited it's made Eva. She'd probably wear this dress every day if we let her. I was so impressed with the pattern and its results that I'll probably snap up the other Frozen patterns from Simplicity. I think that an "Anna" dress for dress-up might make a good Christmas present. ;)

Tuesday drive-by (28-Oct-2014)

Just a few quick things today...

I finished Eva's Elsa dress for Halloween, but don't have any pictures yet. What I do have is a crappily lit video of her performing "Let it Go", right down to Elsa's gestures as she performs the song in Frozen:

It's not in this part of the video, but she even stomps her foot down right as Elsa does when she light up her newly-created ice palace. In any case, we're supposed to get a break in the rain tomorrow, so I'm hoping that my husband will be able to take a few good pictures then, and I'll likely do my "finished project" blog post a few days after that.

With Eva's Halloween costume finished, I'm moving on to some selfish sewing. Outside of my Slip-on Suzie, which is currently aging in the "magic dresser", I've barely done any sewing for myself this fall.  On top of that Trudy from HotPatterns has been on a major roll with her pattern releases in recent months, and I have about a half dozen of her recent patterns that I really want to sew, like, NOW. With that in mind, I started working on paper pattern alterations for the new-ish Wong Singh Jones Sakura Bomber Jacket this morning.

HP WSJ Sakura Bomber jacket

I'm going the wearable muslin route for my first version, as I don't anticipate a ton of fitting issues here. From flat-comparing the pattern pieces, I'll be doing some petite adjustments and an FBA. For fabric, I'm using a mini-houndstooth doubleknit that's been in my stash for ages and black ribknit from stash.

In future sewing news, I swung by Hancock on my way home last night to hit the Simplicity sale. I was hoping to snag some of the just-released new Frozen patterns (to be discussed in more detail in my Friday post), but they didn't have them in yet. Hancock did, however, have all of the other patterns from this most recent Simplicity release in stock. In what seems to be a fairly new thing, they had ALL of the new patterns from the current release in a cardboard display on top of the pattern cabinet. I did come home with the following new patterns:

The Leanne Marshall coat:

Simplicity 1254

The new New Look coat:

New Look 6325

And a new Simplicity/Threads blouse that I hadn't seen previously (it's not on Pattern Review) but that apparently is part of this release. It is available on the Simplicity website:

Simplicity 1279

Simplicity 1279

Shoulder shirring (aka "a way to avoid the Big Honkin Dart" for the large-busted), different cup sizes, and different collar options? That's a big "Yes" for me.

That's it for me for now. What is everyone working on this week?

In Process: Simplicity 1233 - Elsa dress from Frozen

As I think I've mentioned about a half dozen times over the past month, my daughter adores the movie Frozen, and like many, many other little girls wanted to be one of the characters from the movie for Halloween. The funny thing is that every time I asked her, she'd change her mind as to whether she wanted to be Elsa or Anna, so I made the executive decision to make her an Elsa costume, figuring that would have the greater "wow" factor to a 2-year old.

Both Simplicity and McCall's have released their own versions of patterns for the already-iconic dress that Elsa's coronation gown transforms into during her performance of "Let it Go". From comparing the line drawings, the only difference that I can see between the two versions is that the Simplicity version has decorative trim at the waist seam and yoke seam. Even though the "real" version of the dress lacks this trim as far as I can tell, I went with the Simplicity version because, hey, it was the "officially licensed" version.

Elsa from Disney's "Frozen"

I started working on Eva's version of this dress about a week ago. I have to say that I'm quite impressed with the Simplicity pattern so far. Whereas I've seen complaints about the McCall's version running very large, when I pin-fit the bodice to Eva for the Simplicity version, it appears to be slightly on the roomy side of being true-to-size. The skirt is quite long, but obviously, hemming a skirt is much easier than having to take in 5-6" of excess ease throughout the dress (as some reviews have mentioned doing with the McCall's pattern).

Here's what my version looked like before I attached the cape:

Elsa dress in-progress, pre-cape attachment

And close up to get a better view:

Close up of the Elsa bodice

Because I can't leave well enough alone, I am making a few changes to the pattern:

• I'm lining the bodice because the wrong side of the sequined fabric I'm using seemed like it could be scratchy. Actually, what I did is a hybrid between lining and underlining. I stitched the side seams of the bodice on both the sequin and lining fabric, then basted the lining to the sequin fabric. I would have love to have done a traditional lining with everything clean-finished, but because I hadn't completely walked through the construction in my head, I'd already constructed the cape at that point and would have had to rip out French seams from the cape side seams in poly organza. Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.
  
  

  

  "Guts" shot of the Elsa dress

• While most of kids' costumes you see show a solid satin skirt on this dress, the "real" dress's skirt has something sparkly going on. I found an iridescent organza at JoAnn's and overlayed that on the satin skirt. While this doesn't have the ombre look of the "real" dress, I prefer this look to a solid skirt.
• Rather than applique'ing snowflakes onto the cape, I found a fabulous glitter snowflake organza on Etsy that I'm using. (It appears to be sold out now.) Yes, my house is now covered in glitter.
• I'm using a narrow hem on my serger on the cape, yoke, and sleeves.
• I'm undecided on what to make the yoke and sleeves out of. I have the pieces cut both from the glitter organza and a white chiffon. I'd love to just use the glitter organza, but I'm a little concerned that it might be a little stiff and uncomfortable for Eva, even though it would look fantastic. I'm currently leaning towards lining/underlining the organza with the chiffon.

The pattern is well-drafted in that so far, all of the seams and notches have lined up perfectly. The construction methods are pretty sound, as well; they have you use French seams on the sheer portions of the costume. 

Here are two shots of the dress after I attached the cape:

Elsa dress with cape

Close-up of the Elsa dress with cape

I may swing by Hancock on my way home from work in another attempt to find a light-blue chiffon for this dress, in which case I will likely underline the snowflake organza for the yoke with the chiffon, and just do the sleeves in the chiffon. I feel like just going with the white chiffon is too much contrast. Plus, I don't want to use just chiffon in that yoke--with all of that fabric between the lined bodice, lined skirt, and cape, the dress is starting to feel a bit heavy.

How is everyone else's Halloween sewing going? What costumes are you making for yourself and/or your kids?