Hoops have arrived!

The hoop skirt arrived today. Ivy is very excited.

Top and Skirt?

Skirt	Top

These are the current contenders for the skirt and top starting points. Top will be converted to a seam up the back and the skirt will be shaped to the hoop skirt as opposed to having box pleats.

Image

I realized some reading this may not be aware of the dress in question. So... here is an image.

Reference Images Galore!

Can't Take the Sky - enough Firefly reference screen caps to make almost any junkie happy!

Custom Dress Forms

Looking into dress forms - I can buy one that would fit both Ivy and I for ~$100. However, as with most things, the great and mighty Google provided a couple of ways to custom make one that fits you for much much less...

Duct tape form with fashion tape

Paper tape

Another duct tape form

Kaylee Layer Cake Dress

Ivy wants a Kaylee dress for TeslaCon in November. I figure this gives me about 9 months to work on it. We briefly discussed this as a possibility after the last con, but as of today started making some serious plans to undertake this project. I figure Ivy and I can work on it together and we can see what we come up with. The initial steps of the project are involving a bunch of google searches for who has done this dress and their suggestions. However, I have yet to find anyone that did the project for a pre-teen. It is a little crazy to undertake this for someone of her age, but I figure any costume done for her can be worn by her younger sister in a few years.

So far, I have found some well-documented costume constructions of this dress:

Caitlin's Costume Closet - Kaylee's fluffy Shindig Dress

Kaylee's Fluffy Layer Cake Shindig Dress

And a wonderful image reference page at The Costumer's Guide to Movie Costumes.

We don't currently own a dress form, I am thinking of buying one just to make this construction a bit easier. I also am torn beside buying the hoop skirt and making one. If I can find one for close to what the boning will cost, I will just buy it.

My plans are to keep this blog as a record of my progress and notes. Hopefully I can keep up with it!