A Star Wars party dress

The last year I've gotten more and more interested in making inspired clothes that are not exact copies. My Greedo dress is so far my best example. For Celebration Europé I had planned to make a 1950's Amidala dress, but even if I cut out the pattern back over Easter I was too late with it. I have my gorgeous silk for it and a replica Amidala fabric for it, but the fabric are so expensive that I want to be really careful when I cut into them. Instead of stressing and maybe making mistakes I did other projects for CE instead. I still haven't posted about my main CE... With a few days left and basically all the serious sewing done I figured I could try and make a simple, easy SW inspired gown, not the least for the costume clubs party on Saturday.

The Dreamstress just had a great post about hubris when sewing, and this dress was definitely a case of sewing hubris.

I started out by digging out the remains of my classic Leia fabric, it should be just enough to make a kneelength dress. Leia's dress is a basic T-shaped form, but I wanted something a bit more fitted, and sleeves that weren't quite as big. I cut out the fabric, only to realize that I had cut it way too tight. Seriously there were around 20 cm missing over the hips unless I wanted a really bodyhugging dress. There wasn't enough fabric left to be able to cut out a new dress...

Instead I started Leia dress take 2. My main CE project is made from a lot of white poly satin, and I still had some left over. Maybe I could use that, even if that would mean a shiny Leia. This time I decided to be a bit more careful and use a pattern. I used my basic pencil skirt pattern which fits like a charm. The fabric that was left should be enough to make a wide bodice, like a t-shaped tunic. That would give the top of the dress a Leia silhouette, while the skirt was narrow. Well I don't know how it happened, but eventhough I pinned and draped on my dressform I managed to cut the top from my back measurements, and not my front measurements. Since I'm a D-cup that makes the difference between back and front pretty big, something I didn't realize until I had installed the zipper and tried to close the dress. I got even more angry with this since the skirt fit so well.

So there I was, I had just waisted a lot of hours and relegated a lot of fabric to the bin, since it was cut in ways that I wouldn't be able to use it. I hoped to be able to salvage some part of it so I ripped the skirt from the bodice and went to my stash to see if I had any white fabric that I could use for the bodice. Turns out I only had white cotton voile and a very wrinkly cream charmeuse, and that would not work colourwise.

I didn't want to give ut totally though, so I started to see if could make anything from the scraps, and then I tried the skirt on with the failed v.1 of the dress. After all it fit will above the waist. Said and done it worked, even if I'm not a fan of mixing such different fabrics in one dress. In order to tie them a bit more together I added a silver stripe both to the hem and the collar.

It's not my highest quality work when it comes to finishing, in fact I've kept the edges of the interlock raw since they don't unravel. Still with my Leia belg and white boots I think it will do fine. I need to find a slip to wear under though, one layer of interlock is a bit too seethrough for my taste.