Princess Merida - Part 1

With Disney princesses being some of the most popular cosplays out there, I knew it was only a matter of time before I got an order to replicate one of their dresses. (I've done "Once Upon a Time" pieces and a Cinderella Pin-Up, but not an exact replica).

Reference Photo from Customer

Reference Photo from Customer

I was super excited to get this Merida commission. This Pre-Raphaelite style is one of my favorite to create and I love the long graceful lines of Merida's dress, not to mention the awesome underdress ruffling at the sleeves! My customer was very involved in determining all of the details, and sent me a long list of photos both from the movie and from other cosplays, pointing out what she did and didn't like about each of them. This was incredibly helpful!

This is the fabric we went with. It's a bit light and not quite green enough in this photo (and I did color tweak it), but you can get an idea of how it looks. It's actually a fashion denim, which is not what I would have expected to pick for this dress, but finding a good linen proved difficult and expensive, so we decided to go with the denim. I knew that the high cotton content would make it easier to care for, and the stretch aspect would make it more comfortable.

Above is the photo I took with it to give my customer an idea of how it draped.

here is a mock-up of the sleeve I did to ensure that the undersleeve was full enough. I didn't have quite enough of the fabric to make it as full as I'd originally intended, but when my customer saw these pictures she assured me that all was good.

The underdress was made from a thin cotton voile I found in the home decorating department at JoAnn Fabrics.

Here I've pinned the overdress pieces onto the form to get an idea of how it would all come together.

Here you can see how I gathered the neck. Basically I gathered along the hemline and then stitched over it again to secure the gathers in place.

For the sleeves, however, I included elastic so they'd have some give.

The underdress was very basic - thankfully! It definitely needed to have every edge serged, as it wanted to fray terribly.

Here the first seams are sewn! I ended up pinning them in a bit more to create (per my customer's request) more fitted through the hips than an A-line.

Check out Part 2!