Well guys, it’s my 3rd year of making costumes and actually wearing them (as opposed to year 8 of making long term costumes and not wearing them maybe ever… Because that does still happen… This one’s cheerier), and it’s also my 3rd round of updates to my Ariel costume.
Year 1 was my Ariel with a deep blue rayon skirt, matching bow, and hair extensions.
Year 2 was the Ariel with a pair of light blue rayon lawn culottes, along with Year 1’s bow and hair extensions.
Year 3, or this year, is the year that I made linen-cotton culottes and ditched the hair extenions. I kept the bow though!
Last year’s culottes were awesome! Except, well, except for the hole in the butt. So this round, I decided to keep with the culottes idea, and ditch the way too lightweight rayon. Plus I wanted them to be wearable in real life.
Again, like last year, I dyed the fabric myself. This year it’s this linen/cotton blend as the substrate, though. I dyed it with the same royal blue fiber reactive procion dye, in my trusty five gallon bucket. I’m not sure how much fabric is actually was in there, but it was waaaaaay too much for that bucket.
I think it was about 4 yards of fabric, though. Those legs are wide…
The fabric is reasonably stiff with almost no drape, which does mean that these culottes come with their own volume. But, since I didn’t bring an iron with me, only a steamer, I didn’t get a sharp front crease at the pleat, so some illusion was lost.
It also made problems in the back. See, I wanted to avoid the zipper and corset problem I found last year, and installed an elastic back… But I was a bit willy nilly in the altering, and didn’t think about the large quantity of fabric that’d be gathered on the back, so I trudged through. (I used this tutorial, if you’re interested.)
This was right after Megan Nielsen released pockets as an add on/update to the pattern, so I was lucky to get the huge pockets that I so love about her patterns. They’re fantastic!
Sewing up went quick, and I installed the elastic and tried it on. In hemming I probably cut off at least two inches, and the hem is about an inch and a half deep. But then I discovered that the elastic (two rows of elastic, mind) was not strong enough to keep the skirt up.
So I took off the elastic, cut it down, and then reattached it, and it worked fine enough.
When I walk, sometimes the extra fabric “walks” awkwardly in front of me, but I did raise the inseam by about two inches after I noticed that, so fingers crossed that fixed it.
I’m considering unpicking the back and making “artistic darts” to reduce that waistband bulk, but that month is not this month. Maybe next month.
My hair was super long this year (comparatively), so I nixed the hair extensions on the day. They always get stuck on stuff and drag my scalp with them, and then I take them off midday anyway.
But the bow and necklace have held strong! This year, I did stick on some fake earrings, meaning pearly cabochans with eyelash glue. They were cute, and did last all day!
So that’s year 3 of Ariel! I dunno if she’ll make it another year… I had to do some repairs to the corset this year, due to the really cheap “coutil” that I used, but I hope that next year it’ll be around!