Next in the string of Star Wars costumes related posts: combining multiple patterns to get the actual pattern for your costume.

This is going to be a brief little overview to a very simple (in my opinion) concept. What do you do when you can’t find an exact pattern to create the costume you’re trying to make? You get a little creative. The main costume I was in charge of for the GNFCC Business Expo was Mon Mothma, and she wears a long flowy dress that’s fairly fitted at the top, with long poofy sleeves that come in at the wrists. Over top of that is a big old panel of fabric (technical terms) with a collar and some doodads (also technical).
The thing about dresses with big poofy sleeves like that is that they aren’t exactly in fashion, and probably haven’t been since, I don’t know, wedding dresses in the 80’s?

So Stephanie handed me two different patterns to get started. The first, is obviously the main fitted dress, and the second is a pirate costume with long flowing sleeves (that don’t come in at the wrists). Perfect. Cut out and piece the dress from the one pattern, then cut out the sleeves of the other pattern and attach. Simple, right?
However, I ran into a little snag, and anytime you combine patterns you might run into something like this. If you look at the pirate pattern, the top of the sleeve is flat because it’s meant to hang off the shoulder. I could have left it like it was and attached it, but then I would have to gather the sleeve up top and then both the bottom and top of the sleeve would be poofy. Mon Mothma doesn’t have gathering at the top of her sleeves, just the bottom where I was going to have to put elastic to pull it all in.

What to do? What to do?

In the end, I ended up taking the sleeve pattern from the main dress, laying it over the sleeve pattern from the pirate dress, and pinning them together. I cut them out like this, sewed it long ways down the sleeve, and then began to take it in until the top of the sleeve fit the sleeve hole properly. It ended up working out perfectly, even though I was making it up as I went along.

In sewing, you can absolutely use a pattern as a general guideline instead of an absolute rule. Be patient and think everything through (and make sure to see if your Frankenstein’s clothing fits as you go along). You can make it work and I heartily encourage giving it a try. While I’m certainly not brave enough yet to try and make my own clothing patterns (maybe if I had a mannequin…), I am slowly getting braver and braver when it comes to using patterns as “guidelines” instead of “exact rules.” You’re allowed to break rules in art…otherwise you’re not doing it right!
So go crazy!

P.S. How does everyone like the new blog header?

P.S.S. My photo made the front page of the Milton Herald!  The drama surrounding this is slowly getting sorted out.  I won’t write about that here…they’re making it up to me (in theory), so as long as they follow through I don’t want anybody getting angrier than I already got (especially since they fixed the online article so quickly for me).  More about that later!  Check out the article here!