Padme’s Picnic Dress Disneybound – Star Wars
Made for: Disney Trip May 2025
Background: I found this dress on clearance and it was just begging to be used as a picnic inspired disneybound.
Journal Entries: Read more at my padme picnic disneybound tag
Related Costumes: Queen Amidala Post Senate Disneybound, Padme Lake Dress Disneybound
(coming soon)
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: Nothing yet!
Please note that none of these costumes are for sale! This is my personal portfolio.