Elsa party dress

The Frozen party blog posts continue… Next up is the Elsa party dress. My daughter already has an Elsa costume, but I wanted a fun dress for her to wear to her party. My plan was for it to be an everyday dress, but it ended a more dressy than I intended – oops. That doesn’t bother my daughter though – she’ll still wear everyday .

The dress is made from foil jersey – a stretchy, knit fabric with a pretty shimmer. No zips or button holes required – woo hoo! The skirt is a double-layered circle skirt, with the bottom layer from the same foil jersey and a top layer of snowflake organza. Finally, I added short sleeves from the snowflake organza (since it’s to cool here in October for sleeveless dresses).

I started with a basic bodice pattern (I used the one from Five and Ten Designs Volume 1), cutting a front and a back on the fold, and sewing the shoulder and side seams together.

For the skirt, I used this tutorial at Straight Grain for how to add a circle skirt to a dress, cutting skirts from the two fabrics. I made the sheer over-layer a couple of inches longer than the lining layer – just to make it look a floaty and twirly. I basted the two layers together and then attached them to the bodice.

The neckline was finished with fold-over elastic, and I top-stitched around the armscye to keep the seam allowance hidden. The foil jersey tends to run if you stretch it close to a cut edge. I tried hard not to stretch it before I sewed the elastic one, but unfortunately it ran when I tried it on my daughter (which you can see in the photo above). It looked kind of symmetrical (and I didn’t have the energy to start again), so I left it as is. Elsa wasn’t perfect, so it’s ok that the party dress isn’t perfect!

Since it was a knit fabric, I didn’t finish off the hems and seams. I sewed a rolled hem on my serger for the sleeves and skirt hem of the snowflake organza.

I also trimmed the organza back a little on the bodice/skirt seam so the organza wouldn’t irritate my daughter, and then pressed the seam to the bodice side and top-stitched.

It’s the first dress out of my daughter’s wardrobe at the moment, so I call that a win!

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