Mara Jade’s Green Dress – Star Wars EU novels

Made for: Dragoncon 2024

Background: I’ve wanted to do this for SO LONG! I had 3 Mara costumes I wanted to do from the beginning and this was the last one.

Journal Entries: Read more at my Mara Jade Green tag

Patterns Used: Simplicity 1045 (new version of the old Simplicity 9891)

The Dress:
Soooooo this project was supposed to be a quick weekend project, but it was a disaster at the start and took double the amount of time I planned.

In my head I have always wanted to find a nice green faux suede for this. Why? I don’t know, it’s always been suede in my head. So when I decided to commit to this costume for Dragoncon 2024 (I held off for a while, wasn’t sure I’d have time), I found a lovely green suede online and ordered it.

When it arrived, it was sooo soft and had the most beautiful drape, like a velvet! Buuuuut it looked brown. Much different than the green in the photos shown on the site. I could’ve swatched it but I’d ordered from their site before and their photos were usually pretty true to life. So I sadly returned it and went hunting for something else.

I ended up with a forest green suede from another site – actually the same site I got my faux suede for Shin from, so I figured this would be good. Well it arrived and I liked the colour, but it was soooo stiff.

I decided to go ahead anyway, it’s just a for fun costume, if it’s a little stiff it’s fine. (red flag emoji)

I used the Simplicity pattern I linked above, I know it fits me well and it’s easy to use, and it had the princess seams I wanted. I just cut it shorter and used a different, fitted sleeve. So I got the panels cut out of my lining fabric first, then my suede. Got each layer assembled, pressed and also top stitched each seam on my suede layer – since it was so stiff I thought it would help the seams look neater and add a little visual interest (red flag emoji)

Next I got the lining layer sewn to the bottom edge of the dress, which ended up taking way long than I expected because they just weren’t matching up. Finally figured that out, got them sewn together, pressed the hem and tried it on… and the skirt basically looked like Judy Jetson (red flag emoji)

I was like, ok, what can I do here to make this work. First, I unpicked the whole hem and removed the lining. Not having the stitching on the hem helped a tiny bit. Next I took some width out of back and side seams from the waist down. I also removed all the top stitching on the seams from the waist down. That helped cut down on some of the flaring out. I also removed the “point” in the front of the hem of the skirt because it just looked weird with how the skirt was falling.

I cut the skirt section off the lining layer and installed it only in the top at the neckline and tacked it in at the waist area. Next I tried doing the hem by hand. I did about half of it by hand and tried it on to see how it looked and it didn’t work, rolling up that much of the stiff suede was making it flare out again. So I ripped that out (red flag emoji)

So I was like ok, what’s the least invasive hem treatment I could do… I cut a long strip of my thin lining fabric, sewed it along the bottom edge of the suede dress, and then flipped and pressed it up to the inside. I tacked that in place by hand. That seemed ok. When I tried it on it I still didn’t love it, I had to stand there and arrange the skirt to look decent for a photo. But I pressed forward (red flag emoji)

I went ahead and got a zipper in, and then I added a sleeve… and again, the stiffness of the fabric just made the sleeve look weird. I tried it on again and zipped completely up, I realized I’d made a mistake Same mistake I made on Dolores in 2017 — forgetting to consider the neckline in my pattern modifications. It just doesn’t come up in my brain!! So the neckline was way too wide, came down too low in the back, the sleeves were puffing out weird at the shoulder, the skirt still looked like shit…

I threw the towel in. I’d gone past too many red flags thinking I could make it work. At this point I knew I hated it and I had to quit before expending anymore time on it.

Chase insisted on taking me down to the “other” Joann Fabrics to see if we could find something else – it’s about an hour drive away but it’s often better stocked than our closer location. Of course they had no green suede, and that’s when I decided I’d have to let go of my own little dream of this costume being suede if I wanted this costume for dragoncon this year.

So at Joann I found a “Very Soft” green cotton (it was literally called something like “Very Soft” in the name on the bolt, but can’t find it on their site). It was like a cotton that’s already been washed a hundred times and it had a tiny bit more of a soft texture to it than like a kona cotton. It was the perfect colour, so I got 2 yards. Cotton is NOT what I wanted for this costume, but hey, at least it’ll be cooler to wear than suede, right?

The next morning I regrouped. I’d wasted a whole Saturday, but I decided to just think of the suede dress as the mockup. I’d already solved all the problems, now I could just go. I recut a new lining, cut out the dress panels from the cotton. Got it all assembled. Sewed lining to cotton layer at the bottom, and at the neckline (adjusted neckline to come in further!). Understitched my hems so they looked nice. Put zipper in. Finished lining by hand. Installed sleeves.

And I had it done in a day. Whew. Glad I didn’t have to spend much more time on it than that! But lesson learned – pay attention to the red flags. I mean I’ve already gotten that lesson a gazillion times but maybe one day it’ll sink in.

Accessories::

Chase 3-d modeled and printed the shoulder pauldrons for me and painted them brown. They attach to the dress with velcro.

I bought the bag. Didn’t feel like or have time to make something.

The brooch Chase also 3-d modeled and printed for me. We took a little creative liberty with it – instead of just a raised edge around the outside, he took the “serpent head” he’d modeled for his Luke Skywalker staff and repeated it around the edge. Nice way to tie our costumes together, especially since the whole reason I wanted to do this costume was to match his Luke.

The boots, boot wraps and belt are all from my Jedi Training Leia. They were close enough I decided to just reuse.

The wig was from Wig is Fashion, and it’s fine. It was an absolute beast to style into this very basic thing though, which I find weird considering the price paid for it. The hair fibers are just super stiff.

Final Thoughts:
I’m so glad to have finally done this and completed my personal “trifecta” of Mara costumes!! I don’t have a lot that I feel needs to be changed, I think at most I may have Chase 3d print an actual Mara saber hilt that is a little lighter, because my basic metal hilt I carried on my belt was pretty heavy.

(coming soon)

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