Elsa Dress!

Elsa Dress

My daughter was invited to a "princess party". Despite being a 5 year old girl, we are lacking in the princess dress department. We have a two year old Rapunzel dress from Target that's coming apart. I asked her what she wanted to wear and she said, maybe you could make me an Elsa dress?

I saw that coming a mile away, and had already started looking for online tutorials. There wasn't ONE that really worked for me, but I saw a lot of photos and decided it would be easiest to make the top with a shirt overlay and just a separate skirt. Oh, and a cape... a long cape.

I think it took longer to fabric shop with a 5 year old than it did to make everything.

I purchased a short sleeved shirt with rhinestones from Kohls to use as the top base.

From there, I cut the shiny blue material in a sweetheart design to attach to the shirt.

 

I wrapped the shiny blue around the shirt and just sewed it along the top and bottom.

She wanted a dress, not a shirt and skirt, but I wasn't sure the shirt could handle the weight of the skirt fabric and the cape she wanted. In the end, it was two separate pieces.

  

She didn't seem to mind that it was two pieces.

The cape is almost 2 yards of fabric so it would be long as requested :-)

I attached the cape to the shirt with Velcro so it could be removed if and when she got sick of it.

 

Box Pleat Skirt

Black and White Box Pleat Skirt

I always have big dreams of skirts, but am short and things never fit right! Since the advent of Pinterest, I can't help but dream of all the awesome things I could attempt to make. I quilt a lot, but don't do a lot of clothing. Enter the Box Pleat Skirt...

Box Pleat Tutorial

One of the many tutorials I found, this one seemed the most straight forward and easiest to follow. I read through all the directions, read all the comments and decided (against my better judgement) to attempt something with a zipper!

I purchased the same Ikea Fabric. As a shorter person (5'2"), I purchased 3 yards for my waist, but had enough for two skirts because of how wide the fabric was/is.

So many pins!

 For every pleat, there's 9" of fabric, so you'll be dealing with a LOT of fabric.

Longer length

 Pin before you hem!! I was tempted to take off two stripes worth. That would have been indecent. Much like curly hair, the shorter it is, the more it sticks out rather than laying straight. In the end I only took off the bottom stripe and as you can see in the final photo, it seems much shorter than that.

I really hate zippers

I didn't even want to post this photo, since it looks so bad.

Things I would have changed... Make the zipper closer to the pleats, 

and maybe just embrace it and try and exposed zipper.

Final Result!

Tulle Skirt!

Tulle Skirt

Perhaps it's having a young daughter who always wears a tutu over EVERYTHING, but I have been wanting a classed-up version of a tulle skirt.

Since I am not creative when it come to designing patterns, I found this tutorial:
Simple Tulle Skirt Tutorial

I bought all my fabric online and was so excited when it arrived. I bought enough fabric to make two skirts, one in grey and one in purple.

I started by taking some of my kids butcher drawing paper and making a pattern. The hardest part is trying to line up the tulle. It folds easy and is a nightmare to pin. Including pattern making, the whole grey skirt took under 2 hours. I was tired of fighting tulle and elastic, so I decided to wait to the next day to make the purple one. My mistake. My husband thought the paper was recycle and crumpled it up to recycle it. That's why it's not in pristine condition in these photos!

The grey was FABULOUS, but I decided I wanted the purple to be a bit longer. Let's be honest, I didn't want to make a second pattern. that was a mistake. Between just trying to add (visually) an inch around the pattern and the now-messy nature of the paper, it wasn't even. I need to work on that.

My daughter has a "princess" birthday to attend this weekend, and I am going to wear the grey skirt, as she believes it best matches her Elsa dress!

Materials Needed

I purchased the materials according to the tutorial.
7 yards of tulle, a yard and a half of knit and some 2" elastic
(I think I bought like three yards, knowing there would be extra for other skirts)

Because I am lazy, I purchased a knit so I wouldn't have to hem anything. That was the rec of the tutorial I used, and she was right. In the end you only sew two things. Once to connect the elastic ends together and once to attach all the fabric to the elastic. SUPER simple!

Pattern along the fold of the knit fabric

You can see the pattern is a little worse for wear after my husband attempted to recycle it.

You want to place the pattern along the fold of the fabric so you only have to cut once for a full circle.

Have you ever tired to pin tulle?!

Seriously, tulle is a pain to work with. It's slippery and full of holes!

I used my quilting clips (really hair clips) rather than pins to hold all the layers together.

 

This is what you should end up with. A circle folded in half

Here are all the layers clipped together

Final Results!

 This is the grey version. The purple version is just a bit longer.

Try It Yourself!