Becoming Elsa: Easy Apron Costume

  

Along with the entire world, my girls fell in love with the movie Frozen.  They sing every song and act out every line to perfection.  I have managed to FINALLY get the song out of my head!  So, it was no surprise to me that Elsa and Anna costumes were on their wish list for Halloween.  I told my youngest I would purchase her dress for her birthday.  I promised my oldest that I would make her an Elsa dress, so here it is!

Back in August, there was not a whole lot of Elsa patterns out there, but searching the web I stumbled upon a great tutorial to make a dress using an apron.  Huh???  Yes, an apron!  This is such a great idea!! You can click on over to see the tutorial HERE  The tutorial was put together by Sarah from the blog RUFFLES AND RAINBOOTS. 

 I'm sure you can understand why I love this idea so much.

1. Less material to purchase
2. Less time to make
3. No true 'right' or 'wrong' way to put it together

 Here is the back.  I purchased an adult size apron, so I just took the waist strings and looped them over the neck loop and that was it.

 The cape is just some tulle.  I used the basic idea of out to cut out the shape from this tutorial HERE.  The tutorial is on the blog MAKE IT AND LOVE IT.  If you are looking for a quick no-sew cape I would recommend checking it out.

I'm not going to go into great detail on how I made this dress.  I whipped this together in a few hours one evening and I did not follow Sarah's tutorial exactly.  I'm afraid I will confuse you if I go into it too much.  Dress making is not my specialty!  (LOL)  I will briefly describe what I'm doing in each picture.  I will say that ANYONE can do this.  Your little girl will be so impressed!

 Here I have made my own pattern.  Just tape enough printer paper together to create a big enough piece to cover the top of your apron.  You only need half of the bodice shape because you will be placing your pattern on the fold.

 We found this beautiful material at JoAnn's.  I had a 1/2 off coupon so I grabbed it up.  We are actually using the wrong side of the fabric as our right side.  It was much brighter and prettier.

 In Sarah's tutorial she just folded the edges of the bodice around to the back, but I thought I would place the right sides together....

 And then turn it right side out after sewing to get a nice clean edge.  I did just fold under the top edge and sew it down.

 Here is what the bottom edge looks like.  I just sewed it down so it would not move on me.

Don't worry about the raw edge because the next step is adding the skirt and it will cover up that ugly raw edge.

 Take the material you are using for your skirt and just lay it out over your apron bottom.  Then, cut the fabric using the skirt edge as a guide.  Be sure to leave some material to wrap around the edges at the sides and the bottom, but most importantly you need to make sure you have enough extra material on the sides so that your skirt can be gathered. 

HOW TO GATHER

 At the top edge of the skirt I made 2 rows of gathering stitches.  To make the gathering stitch, just set your stitch length on your sewing machine to the highest number.  Also be sure to not backstitch at the beginning and the end of your sewing rows.

Now, if you begin pulling on the strings, one at a time, you will begin to see the fabric gather.  In the above picture you can see where I have gathered and then pinned the skirt in place around the bottom edge of the bodice.  Switch your machine back to a normal stitch length (~2.5) and then sew a straight stitch to secure your skirt to the bodice.

 

At this point I then turned under the edges and the hem.  You can see by the picture that I'm not too concerned about what the back looks like!

 Now it is time to add the tulle overlay.  I did the same gathering procedure for the tulle as I did for the skirt.  Pin and stitch.

I had some snowflake buttons I still wanted to add to the skirt, so I placed pins to mark where I needed to hand sew on the buttons.

 

Lastly, I added the ribbon (b/c I purchased the ribbon about a month after the dress was finished!).  I added it to the bottom of the bodice and around the neck line.

 

My girls are now all ready for Halloween!  Oh, and since this dress is on an adult apron, she will be able to wear it into adulthood! (LOL)  I know b/c I tried it on.  Sorry, no picture.  :)

I'll be linking up this week to THESE great linky parties.

 Blessings,

Gina