7/31/2014: Ariel's SightSeeing Dress Part 2

My past 2 costumes have looked kind of homemade so I wanted to make a more professional looking costume this year. I started out by going to Yardage Town to pick up some fabric. I have never been there so I wanted to check it out. Needless to say I was unimpressed by the dinginess of the store and the lack of interest the sales people showed in their customers. I would choose Joann's over Yardage Town any day. I picked up some satin and charmeuse for the top and the skirt.

I tried sewing with the light blue charmeuse and it kept bunching up. I think I was not using the right tension settings on my machine, but I abandoned that fabric in favor of a different, more study satin. As for the darker turquoise satin, I only bought 2 yards and that was really not enough. I don't know what I was thinking. So I had to buy more skirt fabric as well…$$$$$$$!

I started out by making a muslin for the shirt. I used the arm from McCall's 6795. I cut out a size 10 and it turned out so huge. This was going to require some serious modification. I also used another shirt I already own to make the pattern for the rest of the shirt. I just traced it onto regular white tissue paper.

My cat was trying to help me because he is clearly better at sewing than I am.

The muslin I made fit well, I just had to translate that to my satin fabric.

I had a hard time initially with the sleeves. It is supposed to be gathered but it didn't look exactly how I wanted so I ended up making tiny pleats instead. Much better. 

Next I made the corset using McCall's 5321 corset top. I modified the top to have loops instead of buttons because no way was I sewing on 20 buttons. 

It looks gray but it is really navy blue. I don't have a finished picture and I don't want to get it down from the closet so this will have to suffice. 

I also decided to make a full circle skirt, which required me to use 5 yards of satin. the circumference ended up being about 22 feet, and I sewed around the bottom twice. It took forever. I put in an invisible zipper and some hook and eyes to close it up and it fit well and was the perfect length luckily. I had made some alterations before I put the waistband on and it ended up too small, so I had to add a little patch in on the side. After I finished I ended up making it slightly smaller. The last picture shows the enormity of the skirt; that is just 1/4 of it!

Lastly I had to make make my bow. I used the same fabric as by skirt and a little bit of batting to make it poofy. I sewed a hair clip to the back of it so I could attach it to my wig. 

I also had to style my wig. I ordered a wig from AliExpress because clearly I know nothing about wigs but it came and I actually liked it. I just wish it had more hair to hide the top cap or a more nude cap.

I had some pretty good bangs going but in the end i just clipped them back and sprayed them the day of comic con. I also had to pull back the hair into a half pony tail so I could clip the bow on. I used three pieces of wig tape and a wig cap because I was paranoid about it moving. It was practically glued to my head.

In my opinion, the finished product came together very well in comparison and it looks much less homed than my past 2 costumes.