What an incredible journey this costume has been to make!
The snow patterns on the cape are made with silicone from the hardware store. I think I used 18 tubes. Although it gives the perfect effect that I was looking for, it is terrible to work with. The fumes are insane when you’re using a quantity like I did. In case you didn’t know this, almost nothing sticks to it. I had to order a tube of glue worth $50 to try and get my silicone cut outs to adhere to my shoes (funtasma cry103/c) I used about 4 containers of Recollections extra fine glitter from Michael’s craft store in Frost and white aurora borealis to embellish them. They shed like a nightmare. We went to a bar for Halloween and I had a drift of glitter up against the side of our booth. I shook it on when the silicone was freshly spread, but still it didn’t really seal in at all.
I guess I should talk about the back panel, since it took the most time. The section that is embellished with rhinestones was done entirely by hand. They are 3mm glass rhinestones. Not as expensive as crystal but they still sparkle really nicely. I had originally planned to do the whole cape in crystal but after approximately 85 hours I cried uncle. The resulting conundrum was how to make it appear as if it was intentional, lol. I added an overlayer of "jagged ice", a piece of netting with the silicone and glitter technique layered over top to blend the rhinestone piece with the rest.
The fabric for the skirt came from here on etsy: www.etsy.com/ca/listing/189572293/extremely-hard-to-find-…
and it was utterly perfect, worth every penny.
I used vogue pattern V2810 to construct the skirt and corset, with a few necessary modifications. I made the front of the skirt flat, and put the slit in . It was a good guide to work from as I’ve no experience adding a train to a dress. Mine came out funny because I was working with patterned fabric and I couldn’t place the pattern pieces in the correct way to achieve the right drape while still having the fabric pattern face the direction I wanted it to. I also didn’t put a busk in the front of the corset, which I am still not sure about. On one hand I have the look I wanted in the front, but on the other hand if I had put the busk in I could have sewn the cape right on to the corset, which in my opinion might have been worth the compromise in appearance, because it would add more convenience (but when has looking good ever been about convenience, am I right?) The cape is connected to the top of the corset with bra hooks and has to be put on once I’m laced in to the corset tightly. The corset is boned with spring steel, and it’s a good thing, because the cape weighs so much that if it was boned with plastic it would probably buckle under the strain.
Because I planned to wear this on halloween and to conventions I added a small clasp at the bottom of the train that connects with a recieving piece sewn just below the zipper. It allowes me to stow the train for easier movement and take it down conveniently for photos (or whatever).
The sequins were sewn to the corset by hand individually, after trimming off the second hole on the end of each sequin (there are almost 6000 of them, in cornflower blue, bought on Ebay from amazonbeads4u). Knowing the corset would stretch a bit as it got warm, I wanted the sequins to be able to move individually to avoid having any of them break off.
For the shirt I used McCalls pattern M4872 (d) but left the top band off the shirt and extended the sleeves to a point.
It took over 200 hours and about $600. For those of you keeping count if I was paying someone to make this and they made $15 an hour, it probably would have cost me around $3600. I love being able to sew 🙂
