Elsa started

This week I've started seriously with my Elsa Coronation Gown.

As you can see I have gotten my wig. It's a platinum blonde, not white wig and it's lovely. It's great to have a wig with a bang, so it actually covers my hairline. I actually feel a bit bad having to style it, so I will be gentle with it so that I can get it back to its original shape.

The skirt took some time to figure out. Frost has is probably the most detailed animated Disney film when it comes to costumes, so I want to be really close to it. Looking at screencaps I started to count the number of seams in the skirt and come up with that it must be a skirt with seven panels.

It's also a fairly tight skirt, unlike Anna's fluffier and wider skirts. When it came to selecting a pattern I went back to an old favorite, McCalls 4491.

This is probably one of the most versatile patterns that I have. I've used it for at least four costumes/ball gowns by now, for example my aunt's Eowyn gown, my own Arwen dress and it was also the basis for my Maria of Habsburg gown, and at least one ballgown.  I also based the sleeves for Amidala's purple trael gown on this one.

It's basically a princess seemed gown, quite slim over the hips but then it puddles a bit on the floor., but it's so easy to adapt into different costumes. It happens to have seven pieces so I took the pattern and cut it off at the waist and then I cut out the skirt for Elsa. The pattern is too long for my very short legs, so when I cut to just floor length I lost quite a lot of the very wide circumference, which is good for this costumes.

The fabric I'm using is a silk/cotton mix that I've ordered from Bangkokthaisilk.com. The fabric is great to work with, it's fraying a bit, but otherwise it's really easy, basically combining the best of silk with the best of cotton. From some angles, and with the flash from the camera, it's really shiny, bot from other angles it's not. The same goes with the colour that photographs a bit more on the blue side, when it's greener in reality.  I would have loved to use some kind of wool, but this fabric was more in my budget, and it wasn't easy to find any wools in blue/teal/turquoise. In order to get more body and a heavier drape I have flatlined each piece to cotton, the fabric Ditte from IKEA.

The skirt is not finished, in that I haven't closed the centre back seam or added a waistband. I want the skirt to be lie flat when I'm going to trace the pattern for the embroidery, and of course do the embroidery.