Maleficent

October 28, 2017

I absolutely loved the costume in Maleficent, so I decided to try and recreate one of the costumes from the film for Halloween. I knew which one it was going to be, the gown worn during the christening scene, I just loved it;

I found the perfect material from the Wimbledon Sewing Centre in Tooting Bec, a crushed polyester, at £5.50 a meter.

I've never made a whole dress from scratch before, so this was certainly a challenge. First thing I needed to do was to work out how it would come together with the separate pattern pieces. I wanted the lines of the folded fabric to run diagonally, so I knew I had to cut the fabric on the bias, which would also help with the shape and drape of the dress.

I started with the bodice, and, as mentioned before, cutting the fabric on the bias.

These were sewn together on the overlocker to form the bodice;

The skirt was cut in the same way and attached to the bodice;

The sleeves were formed by using a basic sleeve pattern shape, but elongating the width????

When these were done, they were added to the main body of the dress;

The final part was to add the collar. I decided to go for a feather collar, rather than replicate the same collar that was used in the film. I wanted to put my own spin on the costume and the feathers references Maleficent's wings being cut off. I bought lots of black feathers and hot glued them to a piece of black ribbon which was the length of the neck line. The feathers gradually got larger as the collar went further up the neckline. There were multiple layers, so that I could get a good thickness.

However, I did come across a problem, the collar wouldn't stand up at the back. To overcome this, i sewn poppers onto the ribbon and onto the dress to hold it up. This seemed to work.

The dress was finished. Next, was Maleficent's staff. I found a tutorial here, It was quite a messy task, but was so happy with the result.