Let me preface this post by saying that I am not a sewer. So if you are one of those amazing sewing experts, prepare to be utterly horrified by this post. I'm sorry in advance. I can stitch a scrapbook page, and even hem my own jeans (a skill which still amazes me every time I manage it), but I firmly believe real sewing should be left up to the experts. Except when I head to Disneyland apparently, and then I lose my head. I blame Pinterest.
Last year I got this idea that I could build a Snow White princess shirt after finding this tutorial on Pinterest. Raegun made it sound so easy, and hey, I own a sewing machine, so how hard could it be? <facepalm> In truth it was both easier and harder than I expected. The princess sleeves worked like a dream - just like she wrote! Like I seriously felt uber cool when I made them. Then I got the idea to add some trim at the bottom...and some flounces...and those were weird, because pattern-schmattern-I-can-just-wing-it took over. Yep. So tiny hand sewn roses, more trim, and ribbon leaves were added to cover the crooked seams and pleating. In the end I was glad I made the shirt and pleased with how it turned out. Just don't look inside. I thought I wrote a blog post about this, but maybe I just documented the crazy on Instagram...in any case, after wearing my creation around the park (and getting hailed by a little girl waiting for a parade who apparently thought perhaps in her off hours Snow White ditches the ball gown skirt for denim) I felt that it was a success. Thanks, Raegun!
So since I'm supposed to hang with an 8 year old girl at Disneyland next week, and I have no girls at my house, this year I figured I'd make her a costume tank of her fav princess and we'd be princesses together. Then she said her fav was Ariel. As in the Little Mermaid. Not Rapunzel, or Cinderella, or one of the others I'd convinced myself would be easier than Snow White. She wants a shell bra and mermaid tail. facepalm
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So I drank a bunch of iced tea and bought a lavender tank (because I do not believe 8 year old girls should wear actual shell bras) and a trio of sparkly material. Dusted off my pattern-schmattern-I-can-just-wing-it attitude and started hand stitching the material onto the tank. We will call this ruching, because I've never ruched anything before in my life and that's the closest thing I could find to what I did, but basically I cut a piece of material about double the width I was guessing I needed, stitched it on top and bottom, then crunched up the excess and tacked it in place. By Hand. For almost the entire length of Beauty & The Beast, since we've been doing Disney Ed with the boys all month. When that looked relatively even, I started stitching on trim, lots of net ruffles, strings of faux pearls, and these awesome iridescent jewel buttons. I stitched on three layers of ruffles at the bottom and repeated the crazy ruching process for the mermaid belt. All. By. Hand.
Keep in mind I have no actual little girl to try this on...I did get one boy (who shall remain nameless) to at least try it on for me to help with the bra placement and final adjustments, but no pictures were taken to protect the innocent and helpful party. He was well compensated. On a person the "bra" wraps to the back and looks much less uneven and weird. The green flounces are towards the back of the hip, too, not sticking out all lumpy. Again this year I was reminded that I'm definitely not headed for Project Runway, but I am happy with the effort, and hoping she will love it!
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