Padme Amidala Padme's Gold flower outfit

Thankies everyone, much thankies! I am really glad you enjoyed our site! Unfortunately, the only SW costumes on it (Jedi) have absolutely horrid piccies. We keep meaning to take new ones! We are planning on fixing them up for the Episode 2 line, though, and setting up a Jedi "diorama" in the parking lot of the theatre for piccies! Yay!

Regarding the Laughing Moon Patterns, I really can't tell how great they are enough. I have tried soooo many others, even ones that have been highly recommended, and they don't even come close. One caveat though, her "sizes" are sized so that the spring (the gap in the back between the grommets) is completely closed. So, if you want the corset to lace nice and tight, I would recommend making it one size smaller. She does tell you that somewhere in the directions, but it is kinda buried, and I didn't notice until the 4th or 5th one I made.

And back to the discussion at hand, I was so caught up in the color of the roses, that I really didn't notice until about fifteen minutes ago, looking really closely at Vanity Fair after the Access Hollywood thing (yay!), that the roses aren't ribbon, they are made out of embroidery floss. Geesh.

 

Hello everyone!

Access Hollywood was amazing!!
I have sooooooo many screen caps!

Here is a bunch of them on p19
aka the picnic gown we know and love!

Time to update my embroidery sketch
and put elastic on my list for the sleeves!

EDIT: My data transfer went over so here it is
on my friend's site..

 

I was soooo excited to see the back of the dress.....and her hair is in the way. AHH what a tease! We need the visual dictionary!! Anyways, I got my new sewing machine in the mail yesterday, and after I checked to see that it worked, I began cutting out patterns and fabric. I forgot how annoyingly tedious and boring that part of sewing is!

Hopefully I'll get to put something together soon now. I decided to do the corset first, thinking that it's going to be the most difficult part of the dress to make. I'm doing a muslin mock-up first to "size" it.

Judy, I thought of making my own roses too. I didn't like the ready-made ones I found, and they were like 8/$1.00. So I can't afford them either!

 

Well, just think of it this way, since the hair is always covering the back of the dress, it doesn?t matter what it looks like! Now you can choose to fasten the dress in whichever manner you are comfortable with! Personally, I will be doing lacings so I can get the nice corseted look.

Well, I was going to make the ribbon roses, but knowing that they were embroidered, rather than being made out of ribbon, definitely changes things. It isn?t a problem for the corset or headband, since they are tough enough to take all that handwork, but what about the cape? I don?t know if sulky stabilizer would work well enough to balance that really heavy embroidery on such a light fabric. Maybe I can just put the ribbon roses on the cape, and save the embroidered ones for the corset.? hmmmmm?..

Well, off to buy my fabric today! And why does silk ribbon cost soooo much???

 

OK, I finally got the "making of..." video downloaded and here are a few things I've noticed:

In this picture:
[image=http://danaking.20m.com/images/access4.jpg]
there are two places where the sleeve is gethered and kind of bunched up. The lower paert is obviously under the ribbons, but does that mean there is another gathered section up closer to her shoulder? Hidden by the cape?

And, also, in this picture:
[image=http://danaking.20m.com/images/access7.jpg]
(Which isn't very clear, because it's off of Access Hollywood) You can see embroidery on the actual bodice. Not the embroidery that Obi_Dawn has been working on, but underneath that. It is kind of "clear", almost like they bought a yellow textured/embroidered fabric to use for the corset. What do you guys think?

 

Okay..major sensory overload from the Making Of video! Wow!

It does look like there are two areas with eleastic on the sleeves. Surprise surprise! We need pictures of her in this dress like the ones they showed us for the blue Tatooine dress! NOW! ( I have no patience )

Anyway, I don't understand what you are seeing as far as additional embroidery on the bodice Mrs._M. The fabric itself is textured, but I don't 'think' it's embroidered too. ?
I agree with Judy about not fretting too much over the fastening for the back. Her hair totally covers it up. I felt cheated that we finally got to see the back and all there was was hair!
To lace it up or to zip it or to hook and eye it...that is today's question...........

 

I just realized that this dress would make and awsome prom dress... *looks at mine that is currently 10 yds of uncut blue fabric*

Hmmm... I just had an idea

 

Hey, if my prom wasn't 10 years ago, I would have definately worn this dress

Okay, question answered. There *is* boning channels in the bodice... look at this screenshot from the Making of P-19

http://www.padawansguide.com/padme/makingof_flowered/pages/Picture%2083.htm

Above the last knuckle on her pinky, and the knuckles on her hand, you can clearly see two verticial stitching lines. So, at least *some* boning was used in the bodice. Also, in regards to the textured question, the bodice is undoubtedly a textured/treated silk, but these screenshots show a lot more of the vines and the embroidered yellow flowers that you can't see in other pictures. Since the color on those flowers is so close to the bodice fabric, it just seems like the bodice front is just more textured than the sides.

I love a costume with references!

 

Well I talked with my mom and she's agree that this would be a terrific dress to do for prom, I'm just gonna change it a little bit..

Mine will be a pastel blue instead, I alread have TONS of blue satin that I'm gonna use, then I also am going to use a pale blue sheer fabric for the other parts, (I need to go get more of that).

But instead of haveing the skirt made out of several layers of sheer fabrics I'm just going to have a skirt of my blue satin beneath the sheer skirt. I'm also cutting out the sleeves completely.

And as for embroidery, since I only have three weeks until my prom (I am cutting it very close) I'll probably only do the bodice and the shawl. Which will still take up most of my time...

Well, must go! I'm going to Joann's today

 

Ooooooo...this dress in light blue will be beautiful! You must post pictures for us to see.

I just wanted to reaffirm my love for this dress:

I love this dress.

Thank you.

 

I just went and got patterns (Joanns had simplicity for 1.99 ), and thank goodness the store is less than a mile from my house...

But I bought, #9125 and #9180, (the corset pattern will have to be modified a bit, it's too small for me by like 2 inches and I am going to have buttons up the back).

And it ends up that in the fabric bonanza they had the perfect fabric for a Jedi robe I'm making for a client... poly/rayon mix, it's amazing. AND it was only 2.96, needless to say my day has been terrific

Of course I'll post pictures! As soon as I get it done, hopefully before the night of the prom

 

I just updated with a new pic of my finished embroidery. I'm sure glad that part is over!

pic

 

Obi-Dawn, that is absolutly gorgeous!

How many hours did that take for you to do that?

 

Dawn,

That's GORGEOUS!!!! Absolutely stunning work. Want to do mine too?

 

Absolutely wonderful job Dawn!!

 

You guys are so nice. Thank you.

Jedi Girl, it probably took me around 40 hours, give or take a few. I'm slow.

Kirsten, if I made one for you, then you'd miss out on all the fun of doing it yourself! I just saw your Jedi costume pics. Looks great!

 

Hi Everyone,

I'm finally back from vacation. I got a lot acomplished on my skirt, but it's not done like I'd hoped. I didn't factor siteseeing into my time estimate. Silly me! Anyway, I'm SO excited by all these new pics! And, I'm feeling really panicky about it all too! I've got SO much work to do and so little solid work time. Ok, telling myself to breathe again. Thank you all for getting these pics posted since I missed the special on AH!

Dawn - As always, your work is exceptional! The embroidery looks so beautiful!!!! I'm really worried about that part! I know I can do it, but I'm not really looking forward to that part yet. I want to get all the big pieces put together first.

BTW, welcome to all the new folks on our little obsession site! Glad to have so many new ideas and opinions on how this dress should be done. Any more thoughts on the cape with all these new pics? I'm starting to think about edging it with embroidery floss. I think that will give the look from the pics. I'm still pondering how to cut this thing out so it hangs right. And how to attach it in some way.

Oh, Mrs. M. - I'm using tulle in "Antique Gold" for my cape. If you look at the bottom corner of the close-up shot from VF (when P and A are nearly kissing), you can just make out a tiny bit of the cape. That fabric looks like tulle to me, so that's how I made my decision to use it.

Well, anyway, I'm glad to hear that everyone is progressing with their various projects. Best Regards,
M.

 

Dawn- 40 hours? Hmmm... so if I use some short cuts and use premade appliques and have my mom do some while I'm at school, I should have it done by the 28th... hopefully

As for the shawl, I was thinking about cutting it the way it is in little waves,(I don't know what the proper term is.) then just hand sewing on a trim or something that looks the same. But since you have more time than I do, I bet embroidering the edge would look best.

 

MiraxTHorn, the cape is definately made out of tulle, you can see it where it lays over the grass on the bottom edge of the VF cover. (I don't think I am going to make mine out of tulle, though, too much of a pain to embroider). The edging, though, what I was thinking was using the thin white satin bias tape and blotting yellow and green dye into the tape. That way I would have some easy way to seal that edge as well.

And Obi-Dawn, amazing job on the embroidery!! I hope to start mine shortly, and I will just have to pray that I can do as well as you did!!

 

Dawn your corset looks great!! Good job! It's going to look beautiful when it's all put together!

As far as the fabric goes, thanks to the "red X of death" you can't see what I'm talking about. Let me try it again

[image=http://www.padawansguide.com/padme/makingof_flowered/images/Picture%2083.jpg]
look above her left knuckles and the second joint of her left pinkie. See the "lines?" I don't know embroidery/sewing terms well enough to explain it any better unfortunatly! ( It doesn't look like that same design is carried over to the sides of the fabric. Just my thoughts though. Anyways, that's probably too tedious to attempt! Just what is that fabric anyways?? I've never seen anything like it! ahh! Have to look harder! Must.find.fabric!

 

Yeah, I don't think I want to deal with tulle either. Right now I'm looking at chiffon over a crepe back satin maybe. For the bodice, I'm thinking about dupioni silk. I've sent out for some swatches, so we'll see what I can find.

What about the rest of you?

 

Thanks for the nice comments everyone.

Mrs_M, I totally see what you are talking about now! I don't know what to call it either. It almost looks like gold thread sticthed in lines. It almost looks like there is some kind of gold thread stitched around all the embroidered designs too. But, I can't be sure. Anyway, one of you guys can try it on yours. I'm done!

For the cape, my mom just reminded me about cutting fabric on the bias. That would work well to help the draping effect. I'm definitely cutting mine on the bias. I'll be using chiffon for mine. Hopefully I'll get a mock-up done this weekend and fill you guys in on how it worked.

I couldn't find the trim at Joanne's to go around the edge of the cape. Judy's idea of the satin bias tape sounds good to me! Thanks for sharing your idea.

MiraxT, have you watched the latest "Making Of" video at the official site yet? It's all about the costumes and this one in particular. Go watch it!

 

I am so frustrated! I am having such a hard time finding fabric that I am satisfied with for this dress. I looked at JoAnne's, Hancock, and Wal*Mart. None of them have the right fabric ( Maybe I am just too picky? I don't know.

Anyways, I tried to look for fabrics online, and found out that I know nothing about fabric! My technique for finding fabric consists of going to the store and looking through the racks untill I find something in the color/texture that I like. So, to make finding fabric online easier, here is my question to you guys: What fabrics are you using/do you suggest for all the parts?

I need your help!

 

Hi Mrs. M,

I know what you mean about finding fabric. It took me a lot of leg work until I found what I wanted. I also had to allow myself to be more concerned with color than the exact fabric match. For the skirt and blouse, I bought crepe which is very different in texture than the real dress, but the color and the drape work, so I'm happy with it.

For the corset, I had to go to the *really* nice fabric store in our area to get the right fabric. It is from the home decorating section, rather than the apparel fabric. It's the closest match I could find. My suggestion would be not to buy anything else until you find that. The other pieces are easier to match later.

I think that store has a website, if you're interested in contacting them. Unfortunately, I didn't get any stock numbers from the fabric I bought. But, you could describe what you're looking for and they might be able to help you. I'd offer to go get it for you, but it's about an hour away and I don't know when I'll be able to. Anyway, just a thought. Hope that helps.
M.

 

MiraxT that was exactly what I was thinking. My mother-in-law was just here helping me with my new machine, and we were discussing the fabrics. I told her I was being a complete perfectionist with the corset material, and that I couldn't buy anything else untill I had it first. So, the hunt continues! I am hoping to go search some more tomorrow if I have time. I did find what would have been the perfect fabric in the home interior dept. a while ago, but it was the wrong color. So I'm hoping they'll order some soon in yellow or gold. I may just have to wait a while and settle for a different costume for the premier. If I wait too much longer on buying the fabric, I won't have enough time to make it!! ( I'll give it another week or so....