Padme – Picnic Dress Disneybound
Source: Star Wars
Made for: Disney Trip May 2025
Journal Entries: Read more at my padme picnic disneybound tag
Related Costumes: Queen Amidala Post Senate Disneybound, Padme Lake Dress Disneybound
Patterns Used: None
A few years ago we were at Kohl’s and while Chase was in line checking out, I was perusing the clearance racks. I came across this yellow floral chiffon dress for $15, and I ran up and added it to our basket, because I thought it’d make a great disneybound picnic dress.
It’s a weird dress, and I see why it was on clearance. It’s a size too big for me yet somehow also I feel like it’s too short on me, like the waist seam doesn’t sit in the right place to either be a waist seam or an underbust seam, it’s floating in a weird space in between. There’s a lot of rough sewing and loose threads on the inside. I put it in the back of my personal closet (not the costume closet) and kinda forgot about it for a while.
When we started planning for our January 2025 trip, I thought of it again. I kinda came up with a plan for what I wanted to do, but then eventually decided it was going to be too cold in January for this dress – even if we had nice weather, it’d be too cold in the morning and evening for something like this, so I did the Post Senate look instead.
But it stayed on my mind. In late Feb 2025 I had surgery, and had to take it easy for about a month or so. But my brain was going “get to work!!” so I looked around for a project I could work on leisurely, without a lot of sitting on the floor and hunching over the sewing machine, and I decided this picnic bound was the perfect thing.
Dress:
I didn’t do anything to the dress except add a few things. I did waffle on what I wanted to do originally. At first I was thinking I’d buy one of the picnic padme bodice embroidery files, do it on my embroidery machine, and make a simple little bodice to wear over the dress, since I didn’t like that waist seam on the dress and that would hide it. But a bodice like that is kinda “too much” for me for a disneybound, it just wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable for wearing all day. I like to keep my bounds close to “real clothes” as possible.
So I decided why not make a belt that has the look of her headband and use that to hide the weird seam? So that’s what I did. I bought a roll of green velvet ribbon and some sew-on rosettes. I did tack the belt onto the dress at the sides, and it closes at the back with a snap. I wanted it to be attached to the dress so I don’t lose it or it slip out of place, but I also didn’t want to fully sew it on because the dress needs to stretch, so it’s just 2 spots on the side seams where I sewed it.
I also made straps for the dress with the leftovers from the curtain, which I’ll talk about in a minute.
Capelet:
For the capelet, I had picked up one of those curtain panels with the floral roses on it. I threw it in some poly dye – a mix of yellow and orange, because the RIT poly sunshine yellow veered too cool. The colour came out perfect.
Then I rushed this cape too much. I really should’ve planned better but I just dove in and cut out a big “U” shape. And then hated how it looked. I ended up cutting the capelet up the middle and adding in a big V shaped inset from what I had left of the curtain to widen it. If this had been the actual picnic costume I was making, I would’ve started over, but since it’s just for a bound, having those 2 french seams is whatever.
I did want to keep the capelet a simplified version, because I honestly wasn’t sure if I wanted to wear it with the dress or not. I felt like the little flutter sleeves of the dress were a decent stand-in for the capelet and didn’t want to hide them, and everytime I wrapped the fabric around the dress and dressform, it just felt like a granny shawl and made the whole thing look kinda blah. So I didn’t spend a lot of time doing the scalloped edge or anything, and I also moved the start of each cape point to the front of the arms instead of center front, just because that looked a little bit less like “I just wrapped this fabric around myself” LOL
I gathered the back and then trimmed the edges in some green fabric I had in my stash. I added snaps to the front points and and center back where it can snap onto the dress if I really don’t want to wear it – but now that it’s done I do like it enough that I will probably wear it with the dress. It’s nice to have the option not to tho.
Accessories:
I decided to do the headband/buns as all one easily removable unit. When I wear my Leia bound at disney, wearing the full costume buns is annoying AF after a while. So for this one I decided to make them a separate piece that I can take off and throw in a bag if I get tired of it, and put it back on easily without needing a mirror and a bunch of bobbie pins.
I started with a plain black headband as the base. For the headband that goes around the forehead, I took my green velvet ribbon from the belt and sewed it into a tube just to make it smaller, and sewed some more of my rosettes on. Then I measured it out and sewed it onto my black headband.
For the buns/snoods, I bought some cheap snoods online. When they arrived, I tested them out to make sure the size was good (it was), because I wasn’t sure of how big they needed to be. Then I took some loose wig hair I had in my wig-styling bin and stuffed it into 2 hairnets to make 2 basic “buns.” Then stuffed those into the snoods and sewed the snoods closed on the inside. I sewed both snood/bun pieces onto the black headband.
I did play around with also adding Minnie ears to this, but decided to wait and see if I felt like adding them after at least wearing this once without. I have plenty of leftover curtain scraps and ribbon to do it. Or I may just make an entirely separate set of ears that don’t even go with the disneybound (kinda like my lake dress ears that I never wear with the lake dress bound LOL)
For the shoes I found a pair of Mary Jane style shoes online that had had a floral print on them! I thought they were too cute to pass up even though they’re pink and not yellow.
History: I wore this for a half day at Hollywood Studios! It was a lot of fun! Got my pic with Darth Vader, wandered around Batuu. Overall it did well. I need to readjust the snap placement – I got it a little too tight and if I raise my right arm too much, it comes unsnapped. The left and center back ones were fine! So one small adjustment needed. I don’t love the belt placement, I think it looks awkward on me. So even though that’s where the seam is (and I wanted to hide the seam), I may experiment with moving it down a little so that it sits more on my natural waist (it’s a hair above it right now. As I said above, that seam I wanted to hide was in a weird in-between space). I didn’t love the shoes. They did start rubbing my feet after a while and I just felt like they didn’t look quite right, but it’s fine. The hair unit worked great, although the velvet headband was quite sweaty! I’ll probably do a white backdrop shoot with this later this year to get some better pics where my hair was actually properly curled (my hair trying to stay curled in orlando humidity is laughable) and also where I’m not sweaty AF.
Please note that none of these costumes are for sale! This is my personal portfolio.