Birthday Princesses

Once upon a time, long, long ago, back around the beginning of summer, the twins stumbled on McCall’s M6141 in my collection. Why did I show it to them? I’m not at all sure. I think I had just watched Angela Clayton’s video about a “historically accurate Rapunzel” outfit and thought they might enjoy it, as that is one of their favourite princesses, after Elsa and Anna of course.

At any rate, the demands were instant. Tris wanted the pink version and River wanted the blue. They haven’t really figured out that pattern envelopes are just a jumping-off point. Anyway.

By some miracle, we found fabric more-or-less appropriate for each look, from a variety of remnants and ends in stash. Note: despite the small size and contrast elements, this is not a remnant-friendly pattern. The skirt is large and sweeping and so are those sleeves. River’s fabric was a couple of different cottons with embroidery (why I picked up those pieces when I never wear those colours, I couldn’t tell you). For Tris, I pulled the last of the fabric from this costume of Ebi’s for the contrast, and then cried a little as I cut into an assortment of pink satin remnants for the main fabric, because man I hate sewing with satin. (Please note:: most of these remnants were actually pieces given to me, which I had hemmed and kept in the twins’ dress up box, where they served any number of impromptu functions. I do not stash pink satin if I can avoid it.) I used white broadcloth for the lining, because I have a ton of it purchased for just such uses.

I set to work tracing out the pattern, since I needed the smallest size. Except. Have I mentioned how much I hate Big 4 costume patterns? I generally hate all their costume patterns. Not for the designs, obviously, but for the shortcuts they almost always take in their drafting. Halfway through my dutiful tracing out I realized that the shortcut the company had made with this pattern was to completely bypass grading the skirt and the larger pattern pieces of the sleeves, relying instead on the gathering to have the same size pieces fit from a kids size 3 to 8. Not even “cut here” lines for separate lengths—just instructions to use the lengthen/shorten lines to get the right length.

Not impressed, McCall’s.

Anyway, once my irritation had passed, I moved on to cutting out. I wanted to make the dress considerably more adjustable than intended, so I modified the front quite a bit. Instead of cutting the princess seams, I made the side front piece into an over-layer with grommets for lacing at the front, and then Frankensteined a single-piece under layer from the contrast fabric.

I ran into some hard limitations on fabric for River’s and had to omit one of the back panels of the skirt. Thanks to the fact that the skirt was drafted in a size 8, though, this worked just fine, though she doesn’t have much gathering in the back. I did take up a little bit of fullness by adding a pleat where the contrast fabric joins the regular fabric, to hopefully add to that over layer/underlayer illusion.

The rest of the construction didn’t irk me too much. The pattern calls for lacing up the back. I was not going to do that. So they are pull on at the moment but may get back zippers added at some point. The puff sleeve was constructed pretty much as expected, though I did modify the length of the “ribbons” to make them a little shorter than the layer they are on top of.

The puff also made setting in the sleeve easy. I also skipped lining the lower sleeve. Due to fabric limitations I had to cut the sleeves from the “contrast” fabric, but I think the look works fine this way.

Tris’s dress was all the same except on hard mode: slippery satin (some of which is terrible quality) that frays at the slightest touch.

I had a remnant of pink jacquard with this black and gold pattern in stash—only enough for the bodice, however. The skirt is cut from two different satin pieces, one of which was a pretty decent crepe back satin but the other one (the back of the skirt) is that crappy and terrible Hallowe’en satin that makes me want to cry. Maybe I’ll replace it someday. (Not likely)

I had hopes of finishing these in time for their birthday at the end of summer, and I came close, but then the day of their birthday we took them to Costco and they saw the princess dresses there and were super excited and their dad is a pushover and bought them four. And despite all being made of nasty polyester they are actually really intricate and well made, and I’m pretty angry on behalf of whatever skilled seamstresses (because it’s almost certainly women) who were paid a pittance so that Costco could sell the dresses for $40. But anyway, that’s a different rant. I was a bit annoyed that the purchase basically undercut my hard work on their dresses, but also I’m not sure what the theoretical maximum number of princess dresses the twins would wear if they could is… it’s definitely higher than six. I did, however, give myself permission to not push to get the dresses finished. So it took until, um, not quite Hallowe’em. Except not really because River’s dress is still lacking trim, but I think she’s forgotten that’s a problem so I’m not going to bring it up.

Anyway, they are pretty happy with the dresses, though I doubt they’ll fully displace the beloved Elsa and Anna dresses. I, of course, prefer River’s since it isn’t polyester, but they each seem to like theirs best which is always the hope now that they don’t like wearing the same thing.

I was not about to do back lacing as the pattern called for, but I probably should have added a back zipper. Because they were pretty oversized (even cutting the size 3 for my four year olds), I just made them pull on and then tighten with the lacing, but it takes some wiggling. Tris’s is “zipper ready” in that it has a back seam I finished and just zig-zagged up. River’s, though, due to my fabric shortage is cut on the fold. But that’s problem for future Tanit.

I also didn’t hem River’s dress quite as ridiculously deep. I cut the full length as drafted in the pattern, which as I mentioned didn’t grade the skirt length, figuring it would be better to be able to lengthen the hem as they grow. Which is true, in the theoretical case where I actually do it. We’ll see how that plays out. Anyway.

I am definitely glad I added the front lacing, as it makes the fit so much nicer and more adjustable, though it doesn’t really play well with the necklines of the under-layer. You can see some of the size difference between Tris and River, even in bone structure, in the fact that Tris has a nice wide gap in her lacing, while River’s still laces closed.

So, were they worth it? I’m glad to have used some scraps from stash, especially the pink brocade. They were a LOT of work, to still end up less fancy than the ones from the store. But I’m also glad we purchased the other dresses. Because I really don’t want to create a whole wardrobe of princess dresses.

Well, not for the twins. Maybe for me…