My little Jakku girl

    Wow! Project run and play is well underway, and the designers looks are amazing this week. The theme is "Inspired by Cosplay", and I have had so much fun with it! I was confused by that word for a while (including the pronunciation - I was saying co-splay in my head for the longest time) but I guess it is just a shorter way to say playing dress up (costume play). Typically, though, cosplay involves adults wearing extremely detailed and elaborate costumes, often worn in conjunction with "con" events (ie. comic / anime / renaissance / medieval / etc. conventions).
    I love this theme. Costumes are one of my favorite things to sew, and my kids can role play for weeks at a time. They get really into it and become their characters in an intense way that is really awesome to watch.
    The theme here though, is to be inspired by cosplay, not to sew a costume itself. It took me a bit to think of exactly what direction we should take it. In the end, we are in the same place as many others, but it is fun to see how different people interpret things even when using the same movie / characters as inspiration. Our house, along with much of the country, is obsessed with Star Wars at the moment. The movies themselves are certainly on the violent side (although there is no gore), but it is so fun to have a sage that spans generations and that sparks imagination the way this does. It is also a nice change of pace from princesses.
    I love the flowy clothes that a lot of Star Wars characters wear, and had been thinking that it would be fun to make something in that style a while ago. When I remembered that, this became the perfect opportunity! One of my daughters got a Star Wars picture book for Christmas that has a spread of "Jakku villagers fleeing from invading Storm Troopers". I know. Not the most uplifting of messages being related here. I totally drew inspiration from these pages though. I love the style of clothes that these poor cartoon characters are wearing. I asked Althea if she had a favorite dress on the page and she chose the lady circled in red.

She said she chose it because she liked the color and the long skirt. So I thought it would be ok to add a hood in the vein of the lady circled in yellow. I felt like these extras in the Star Wars book were obscure enough that if I closely replicated their clothes it wouldn't be too much of a costume. No one will recognize her character when she walks down the street.

   I love the way this came out so much!
   I had the green fabric draped over my sewing chair forever with the intention of making myself a shirt with it (I did that this week as well! Yay!). It is actually an old sheet of my moms, and along with the great color, it has a pretty row of faux piping that is actually very simple embroidery about three inches from one end.  Also, the fabric has a great sheen to it on one side, and it is nice and thick and not see through.

       I used Fern's Maid Marion dress as a base, and drew this sketch based off its measurements:

Then I cut the skirt which was 2 identical pieces cut on the fold that look like so:

And then cut the front bodice using the following measurements: 

I just sort of fudged that arm hole curve based on the other measurements I have there. 

    The back bodice piece was cut exactly like the front bodice, but with a slightly rounded neck dipping down about 1.5" instead of the v-neck. 

 
    The grey fabric was a shirt that was given to me and never fit well (as seen below).

It is this really slinky soft 100% rayon material with some white dashes on it to give it almost a heathered look. I was thinking it might make a good hood. The sewing goddess* was smiling down on me apparently, because as I twisted and turned it, I realized that the wide wing like sleeve might make a perfect hood as is. When I slipped it over her head, it almost did! It was just a tad too short to really sit properly on her head without falling off.

      So I cut off the entire sleeve as it was:

  This is showing half of the sleeve laying on the cutting matt. It measures about 14.5" x 24". The dotted line represents my ideal measurements for a collar for this dress.  

       If it had been 18" x 24" (cut on the fold) it probably would have been perfect. As it was, I ended up cutting an extra ~4" strip from the bodice of the grey shirt and added it to the middle 9" of this piece on the bottom to preserve the existing hem. Then I sewed this collar to the vneck opening. I lined the center of the collar up with the center back of the dress first, then pinned all the way around. Both sides of the collar went around the back, down one side of the v and up the other side. So both sides of the vneck have overlapping pieces of collar attached. 

    The beauty of this, is that when the hood is not up as a hood, it either looks like a loose infinity scarf, or it drapes over her shoulders like a shawl! (Here comes the picture overload!)

And again with her hood up: 

     For the waistband, I sewed some elastic in a loop about 21" long, scooched it up over the outside of the waist of the dress and sewed on some of the grey fabric to make a casing for the elastic and to look like a belt. The grey fabric was a 30" loop about 4" wide. I sewed the casing to the dress at the top and bottom, and also did a row of stitching on either side of the elastic to keep it from moving around and twisting in there, so there are four rows of stitching all together.
         And I will have to leave you with my favorite image as a parting shot:

Thanks for visiting!  I am about to share her sister's Star Wars inspired look as well!