My Alice in Wonderland Inspired Dress

 

This week's Sew Weekly challenge was to make something inspired by any movie that's ever been nominated for an Oscar. I decided that and movie ever so much as nominated was too broad; I do better with limited choices. I decided to stick with movies that had actually won for costume design, and with that in mind was able to narrow it down to a few recent ones whose costumes I fell in love with: The Return of the King, The Duchess, and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. As I mentioned before, I figured that ROTK would involve something slinky, which I didn't feel like tackling just yet, and The Duchess would require proper undergarments first. So that left Collen Atwood's Alice. I love all of her light blue and black dresses; I think it's a genius color palette. I knew I didn't want to make an exact copy of her main dress; I wanted to keep mine a wearable length and use one of the patterns I already had, and most of all, I didn't want to do any embroidery. So the aspects I decided to keep, beside the colors, were the tiered skirt, the princess-seamed bodice, and the little point at the waist.

I really, really didn't want to do my normal tiny hem, but I just didn't have
enough fabric for a nice, deep, two inch hem.

I had a pale blue twin flat sheet for my fabric, which was unfortunately stained in a couple of areas (both questionable brown ones and a couple neon pink blotches), even after washing on the hot cycle. This necessitated some tricky cutting, and I still had to use a couple of the less questionable parts for the pockets, which nobody is going to see. To capture the original dress hem's idea of delicate black work, I chose to use black lace, both large and small trims, as well as a giant applique piece that I've had sitting in my stash since my first trip to the fabric district. For the pattern, I went with my trusty princess seam bodice, New Look 6723, and modified the neckline to fit the applique. New Look 6723 also conveniently includes puff sleeve pieces. The skirt is just gathered rectangles, sized appropriately for the tiers. As an afterthought, I also piped the waist seam for more emphasis and to bring in a line of black somewhere in the middle, too.

I was so glad that I bought two sizes of black lace trim...the tiny one was perfect for the sleeve cuff.

This is a dress of firsts. It's probably the first really embellished dress I've ever made. Normally my dresses are really simple, mostly because the fabrics I choose are already crazy enough. It's also the first "real" sleeve I've ever put in; previous dresses have all been sleeveless, cap sleeved, or so ineffectual at covering my arms they hardly counted. Unfortunately, I didn't muslin these sleeves at all, so...I can't lift my arms. Or move them forward much. I think it's because my sleeve cap is too high? Hmm, time to consult my sewing bible, the Reader's Digest handbook. At any rate, this dress is just for standing around in and looking pretty (and confused and in awe in turns), so it's kind of okay.

The buildings really spoil the effect, don't they?

Going for the classic pose Alice has in all the promotional pictures.

My husband got down into the mulch to get this "Alice looking down the rabbit hole" shot. What a stud :)

Out of the bushes, so you can see the poofiness of the petticoat from the side.

Summary:
Fabric: thrifted poly-cotton twin flat sheet
Notions: zipper, ~3/4 yd black piping, ~1/2 yd narrow black lace trim, ~2 yd larger black lace trim
Techniques used: My first time using piping! It looks so good; I want to pipe everything! And then the usual hand-picked zipper, but no waist stay. The waist seam got so thick, I didn't want to add in more bulkiness with a grosgrain ribbon.
Hours: Hard to say, since I interrupted work on this with making last week's corset. I'm guessing ten hours? Enough to watch a good portion of The West, Sense and Sensibility, and two episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs. 
Will you make this again? Not this exact costume, no, but seeing as how I've already made a good handful of dresses with this pattern, I don't see stopping any time soon.
Total cost: The sheet was $3, the applique $2, the zipper $2, and the laces a whopping $0.15/yd! I also managed to use up an entire spool of thread on this, so the whole thing was probably about $10. Much better than this $40 polyester monstrosity.
Worn with: My thrifted-skirt-turned-petticoat, and black wedges with white socks to mimic the look of Alice's boots. Am I resourceful or what?
Final thoughts: Aside from the not lifting my arms thing, I really, really like this dress. I was so excited, I talked my husband into doing a slightly more involved photo shoot...by slightly more involved, I mean we didn't just step outside. I went poking around our very manicured apartment complex trying to find an area that looked slightly more overgrown, like the landscapes in the movie. Granted, these nicely shaped bushes aren't exactly giant mushrooms, but oh well. There was a family having a barbecue about ten feet away, so I certainly got my share of side eyes, poking around in the bushes with my frothy petticoats. Their little girl gave me a wide-eyed look, and I'll just tell myself that she was thrilled to see a character step out of a story, and not because there's a crazy lady peering out from behind the bushes.

Walnut did NOT want to pretend to be the Cheshire cat.