Saturday, January 31, 2015

Princess Anna of Airendelle's Coronation Dress

I finally finished it!  It took me months because I would work on it a bit, set it aside, come back to it, set it aside, on and on like that.

Here are the kids when they met Elsa and Anna at Disneyland. This isn't the dress that I made though. This is her winter dress and I made her coronation gown.

I really wanted it to be GREAT! But I haven't been feeling like my sewing is spectacular lately, so I've been sticking to simpler projects. This one was a far cry from simple, and while it still has some issues, it's very pleasing to see how wonderful it turned out!

I started with a prom dress that my mom's friend, Gladys gave to me a few years ago. She was hoping I could find a great project for it and I couldn't at the time I received it. Since then, Frozen came out and Anna's Coronation Dress was the perfect project for the light green flower embossed fabric of the vintage prom dress.  Perfect!
Here is the prom dress before I cut it, and the idea of the dress I wanted it to become.

The box pleats were harder than they looked, especially in the back where the skirt comes together with the zipper. The more I look at it, the more I want to rip it out and try again, but I think for sanity's sake, I will leave well enough alone.

The bodice came out wonderfully!  I embroidered it with a design that is pre-programmed into my embroidery machine and used the coronation dress colors. I think it turned out pretty close to the movie version. Close enough!

The gold piece might look familiar, it made an appearance on the Jasmine, Merida, Captain Hook, and Ancient Egyptian costumes that I've made in years past. Scraps are handy!  The black is leftover from an apron that I made for Lexie for work. She was supposed to buy one, so I made her one exactly like the $30 apron required.

I've worked on this dress for so long that I've forgotten where I got the olive green for the sleeves and skirt pleats. They are different though. I honestly cannot recall. I may have purchased the green in the skirt because it is a perfect fabric for this dress. Or it might have been the piece of fabric that we've been using as a Christmas tree skirt for the past decade. Like I said, I can't remember!

I know there are patterns aplenty for this dress, I saw lots of them around Halloween. But, what fun would that be? I used a regular dress pattern as a guide for sizing and went on my own from there. Plus, I needed the box pleats to be just the right width for the printed stripes on the light green fabric. So, I winged it. The pleats are a bit on the wide side, but the pretty flowers more than make up for it!


Here is the finished dress! A beautiful coronation gown that Libby can spin and play in to her heart's content! She loves it and now I'm a little worried about washing it. I think we'll just spot clean it as needed to stretch the life of it, especially since it is made from scraps and old fabrics!





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