Princess Aurora – Sleeping Beauty

Made for: Halloween 2008

Background: My husband had made the pieces for the crown and necklace for me much earlier in the year, when I first started putting together a lavender version of her dress with some leftover fabric. I never finished it and decided to make a blue version for Halloween so I could use those pieces. 🙂 I looked at the Disney park dresses a lot, and took ideas for the construction from them.

Journal Entries: Read more at my Sleeping Beauty tag

Related Costumes: Briar Rose, Snow White

Patterns Used:

Simplicity 2573 for the dress/altered for the bodice. (For years I wasn’t sure what pattern I used and had a couple of guesses listed here. When I finally got this out to redo parts in 2020 I did finally have to make myself figure out which pattern I used an I am pretty sure it was this one – at least, this is what I used for the version 2 bodice!)

Dress:

I made the basic dress using a pattern, out of blue satin. I really hadn’t wanted to use satin, but since this was a Halloween project, I just bought what I could locally since it was quickest. The pattern was pretty much exactly what I wanted for the dress, it had a wonderfully full skirt and the pointed sleeves and everything. The only thing I had to change was the neckline. I decided to do a chiffon overlay over the skirt to make it look a little different than the sleeves and to cut down on the shine of the satin. I dyed the chiffon to help it match my satin a little better, attached it at the waist-line seam and I left the chiffon front open similar to a couple of the park dresses I saw. I sequinned the front edge of the chiffon overskirt as well.

Bodice:

I made the corset/white collar/pointed section as one piece. For the corset section I used the bodice pieces from the dress pattern and lengthened it a little. I lined it and used spiral steel boning – it laces up the back. I came up with a pattern for the collar, and also for the “pointy hip section”. I ended up going with a white and silver brocade for the collar, and used a very heavy interfacing inside it. It closes in the back with a hook-and-eye. The pointed section I used the same heavy interfacing in, and trimmed it with a silver braided trim I found at the fabric store.

Accessories:

My first wig I bought on ebay – I styled it into the big curls. You can see if in the outdoor photoshoot pictures. The second wig was a “Rose” wig from cosworx – I opted to leave out the large curls on the second one (I did some smaller natural ones they didn’t hold very well, unfortunately), and styled the bangs and added some extra wefts for thickness. As I mentioned before, my husband made the crown and necklace out of plastic. My shoes came from goodwill, and I used one of my non-hoopskirt petticoats.

2020 Update:

In 2020 I decided it was time to finally do some updates I’d always wanted to do – I was never happy with both the bodice AND dress being satin (which is why I added the chiffon overskirt, to cut down on the shine), so since everything was canceled for 2020 and I had all the time in the world, it seemed like a good opportunity to make a new bodice. I also bought some new pale blue satin so I could let the back of the dress out, since it’s been too small for me for years (altho I went a bit overboard, and now it’s too big for me LOL). I just removed the zipper, copied the shape of the original back panels, and sewed that onto each side, then re-installed the zipper. The new fabric isn’t an EXACT match, but it’s all under the outer bodice anyway, so it’s not a big deal.

For the bodice, I used the same pattern as the previous version, just tweaked so it was a bit shorter (always felt like the first one was a tad too long), and used a yard of deep blue velvet I bought online. The lining layers were just some blue cotton I had. I reused the same silver/white shoulder piece, and made new hip panels out of some scrap blue velveteen with an outer layer of a sparkle organza – I kept the original trim to put back on the edges.

I was really happy with these updates  –  you can see the revamped version in photos above marked white backdrop 2020, and in the dressform pic here in the text. I feel like the 2020 photos capture the colour of the costume much better than the earlier photos, which are very oversaturated.

History:

Just need to eventually update my wig and I’ll be very happy!

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