Everything’s shiny, Cap’n!

I love my captain!

And my new Kaylee inspired dress!

Both The Patchwork Pirate and Dianne from Dianne’s Costumes and Research have wonderful recreations of Kaylee’s Prairie Harpy dress.

Dianne had found this fabric from Fabric Tales that matches the original very nearly.

But I don’t have that fabric, or the money to obtain it at the steep price.

I do, however, have this fabric! Not perfect, but I think Kaylee would have definitely worn this fabric if she had the chance. It’s playful and colorful enough. Or maybe that’s just me.

And I have a lot of it. It being the same fabric I used for my culottes. And I have some left over still.

It also wrinkles all over the place. It’ll crease just by lightly folding, even without ironing or pressing it.

I draped the bodice on a borrowed dress form, though it seems I’m a bit chestier than then form is.

At that point I didn’t care much about the direction of the grain of the fabric, since I was using scraps for all of it.

Aren’t scraps lovely?

So then I let it sit around awhile as I was thinking on a skirt plan. Or rather, while I was doing that homework and classes thing…

I lined it in the meantime, which brought about it’s own challenges, but worked out well in the end.

And then I got to work on the skirt. I knew it needed to be at least a little bit full, and I knew that my dress needed to be lined.

In the end I cut out a few rectangles and sewed it all up.

And then it was too tight. Pencil skirt tight.

So I unpicked all of that and added another identically sized rectangle, which brought the fullness I had wanted.

Sewed the waistband to the bodice, and tried it on.

At this point I realized that the bodice was big around my actual waist, in order to get it over my head.

Looking at the inspiration photos of Jewel Staite as Kaylee, I saw that she had an attached belt. So I set about making some belt-like strips. I didn’t want to make one that would actually tie around me, as I often find them uncomfortable, so I had them attach with hooks and eyes.

And finally success!

It matches really well with the jacket I made for my Halloween costume, since the blue is mirrored in the dress fabric.

So all in all, a happy Halloween!