Queen Regina's Purple Dress - Part 3

Fact. This was my first time doing a big stand-up collar.

I knew the mechanics and drafted a decent pattern as you saw in part 3. But would it come together how I envisioned? Let's see...

Because the pieces were so small, I traced them onto the blue fabric and embroidered the flowers before cutting the pieces out.

I interfaced them and stitched them together... now time to add the trim!

Fact. It is nearly as difficult to find silver and black striped trim as it was to find blue/purple/black floral fabric. We finally located this at Hobby Lobby - it comes in spools of 15 feet. It's shinier than the original Queen Regina costume on "Once Upon a Time", but my customer was fine with that.

It was also wired, but thankfully the wires just slipped right out. I folded under the black edges and stitched one side down. For now, I left the top edge open.

Then I spaced out all of the embellishments! (We collected the embellishments from different vendors on etsy and ebay.)

Pinning the collar in place to see how it holds up...

Here's the whole thing coming together!

Now I had to add the purple pleating. To start with, I traced the collar shape onto some tissue paper.

I then cut the blue tissue into four sections and spaced them out equally onto white tissue. This is to allow extra fabric for pleating equally across the curve.

I used a plum purple chiffon to make the pleats.

Then came the pinning.... to start with I pinned the pleats across the top, right sides together.

To hide the seams and the white interfacing, I added a layer of black chiffon in between, and spray painted the white interfacing. Then I turned everything right side out...

And pinned and basted those fussy little pleats in place! I found spraying the chiffon with water helped make the fabric less slippery as I was working with it.

Time to starch! I used Stiffy and watered it down a bit. I tried to spray it on, but the spray bottle got gummed up after one coat so I switched to a paintbrush.

I put a ton of starch on in several coats and my client still had to add more. If I make another collar like this, I'll use stiffer interfacing and even more starch.

At this point I remembered - "Oh! That's right, I have to put boning in the bodice!" So I did that while the starch was drying.

Time to add lace to the top edge of the collar!

I loved getting to work with so many beads...

Time to sew the collar in! I stitched it to the outer shell first...

...then turned everything right side out and pinned in the lining.

By now, all of the lining and shell seams were connected - except for the center front. Here I inserted a very strong separating zipper. It was too long, so I shortened it, using a pliers and a metal eye to create a stopper on the top.

So close to done!!!!!!! Part 4 reveals the final product...