Presenting Princess Daisy

I posted earlier that one of my plans of the year is to make Princess Daisy from the Super Mario universe. The idea was born on the way home from NärCon and definitely inspired by woodsling's Luigi.

My favorite Daisy outfit is her winter outfit.

But then last week happened and I had a bunch of pieces of a bright and lovely yellow-orange silk velvet. A colour that would be perfect for the more traditional outfit for Daisy.

I would not have enough fabric to get a full length skirt, but Daisy also has an early tennis dress that looks like this.

And that's the style I decided to go for, with some changes. First of all I want the skirt to be longer, so I can be comfortable in it. I'm also going to go for Daisy's regular teal jewels instead of the blue ones that she's wearing in this version. I also don't think I have enough fabric to be able to make full puffed sleeves.

On Thursday I whipped up a quick mock-up for a short full-skirted dress.

The bodice is my standard stretch dress pattern, but I added a couple of cm on each seam, because I want to be really comfortable and not have a tight fitting dress. I managed to get a bodice out of the silk velvet.

Silk velvet is really slippery and should be tacked down everywhere, or at least use a lot of pins. I chose to construct the bodice like I did my Lady Poe bodice. That is I first sewed the lining, and then I mounted the outer silk fabric to the lining. I then found a couple of meters of a cotton voile in my stash, and I gathered three lengths together to make the underlayer of the skirt.

The skirt was also sewn to the lining, not to the velvet. I also added pieces of cotton tape that I will use to hike up the skirt, everything to avoid having to attach anything to the slk velvet.

In the back I added a zipper, also to the lining, and then I handsewed the silk fabric edge to edge with the zipper. Overall the silk velvet is handsewn, it's so much easier to keep the fabric from slipping and controlling the tension compared to when I tried to sew it on the machine. The skirt consists of as many square pieces of fabric that I could cut out rom the silk velvet and then sewn to the lining. I finsihed by folding the outer fabric of the bodice over the skirt and hand sewing it down.

On the photo above I have just tied a white ribbon over the waist and pinned up the velvet skirt. Next steps are to make a proper waistband and sleeves, and then it's time to permanently fasten the skirt. I also want to make the skirt poufier. In this photo I have one of my tuille petticoats under the dress, but I'm thinking that I need more petticoats or tuille to get the shape I want.