Do you know what a cool thing to have as a little girl is? A God-mom who can sew and make your own custom princess gown. That’s what my God-daughter was blessed to have for her 5th Princess Tiana themed birthday party.

In the world of parenting, turning 5 is a big deal. When my best friend solidified the party plans to have a princess party, I already knew she’d want the big gown to go with it. In the end, she decided to have a Disney’s Princess Tiana themed party and that’s where the fairytale begins.

To watch the design process in full and skip the reading, scroll down to The View section and watch videos part 1 and part 2.

Design

In designing the Princess Tiana themed dress, there were two requirements that needed to be met. For starters, the dress had to be Tiana inspired, not a replica. My best friend didn’t want her daughter to be a carbon copy of the Disney princess herself. Secondly, the child has an issue with textured fabrics touching her skin. If any tulle, sequins or lace touches her skin she will not wear it. Imagine putting in hours of work and the child decides not to wear her gown because it makes her uncomfortable. I would cry. It’s reasonable, but I’d still cry.

To satisfy the first prerequisite, I went to Pinterest and pinned very full flower girl dresses for inspiration, along with different Princess Tiana costumes and fashion illustrations to use as reference. You can see my Princess Tiana board by clicking here. Ultimately, keeping the same color scheme for Tiana was important and I tried to keep the iconic details of the costume but didn’t want them to control the overall output of the design. If a detail didn’t fit the overall vision, it didn’t fit the overall vision and I was fine with losing it.

For the second prerequisite, whatever I used for the lining of the dress had to be soft. During the consultation I decided I would use a jersey fabric because it was safe for a 5 year old. Whatever the finished product would be, soft t-shirt fabric would be what she felt on her skin.

The final design was a mixture between all three concepts.

Materials

Green embroidered lace from - Fabrics.com
Heather green cotton/rayon jersey - self stash
Champagne polyester lining - Joann
Champagne tulle - Joann
Gold Glitter tulle - Joann
Green thread
Champagne thread
¼” elastic
Green invisible zipper
Lightweight fusible interfacing

Patternmaking

So first, let’s start off with this is the first formal gown I have every created in my 15 years of sewing and designing. Nah, let me stop, that’s I lie. I’ve made bridesmaid dresses for this same friends wedding. This is the first dress and first formal dress I’ve made  for a child though. That is the honest truth.

I tried drafting the pattern myself, and you can see how that turned out by watching my IG highlights. In the end though, a few basic patterns were “gifted” to me and I was able to use those as a base pattern.

Cap sleeves were full and gathered at the shoulder. The skirt was a hi-low circle skirt.

Cutting

I’ve never worked with tulle before so this was new. It was very temperamental and fidgety so I had to move slower than normal. I ended up pinning layers of the tulle together to cut out strips for the skirt volume.

Glitter tulle is the devil and it sheds everywhere. Months later and I’m still finding gold glitter in places.

This was also my first time working with sequin embroidered lace. As a caution when you sew sequins, you want to cut all the sequins that fall near the seam allowance. This ensures that your needle won’t break trying to penetrate a sequin. I assumed it would be a quick task given that the sequins on the lace were a small amount, but snipping them took longer than expected.

Sewing

I hand sewed the strips of tulle. First I gathered them for volume and then sewed them to the skirt base layer. In hindsight, I should’ve seen the gathered layers on with my sewing machine. I was just too scared.

The most problematic area was the waist. I wanted it to stretch so my God-daughter could have a little growing room and the dress could be worn multiple times after the party. The tricky part was I didn’t allow for an elastic waistband while patterning the dress in the first place. That idea ended up being knixed. Beyond that, my layering was off for a clean finish at the waist. Usually she’ll fabric would attach to shell fabric and lining would attach to lining. Because of the tulle skirt, I didn’t have a skirt lining piece. The tulle edge ended up being raw on the inside, which was against one of the requirements, so I had to figure out how to position the soft t-shirt fabric over that seam for a clean finish.

Critique

I LOVE the dress. As soon as baby girl put it on with her puff and crown, I said, “Yes, that’s it!” There was definitely a lot of tooting my own horn going on. At least in my own head.

You could easily tell that the dress was Princess Tiana inspired but with more glam.

If I were to do it again, I would go about the tulle skirt in a different way. For one, I’d buy more yardage of tulle and from the Fashion District to save on cost. I’d also layer the tulle differently on the skirt. There were 3 tiers of gathered tulle and they looked choppy instead of the base having full seamless coverage. I would also do better on the invisible zipper construction and stabilize the stretchy jersey better.

Evaluation

Overall, I appreciate my first custom design, but it put me off from wanting to use tulle. I’m not saying I won’t ever use it again, but I’m not jumping through hoops to do so.

It was a great first attempt at formalwear and I’m curious to see what else I can do in adult sizing.

The View

To watch this Disney’s Princess Tiana custom designed dress come to life, watch part 1 and part 2 of the design process below.

If you want to feel bold and inspired through your personal style and have a custom design created for you and your social event, click here for more information.

#MJConsistencyChallenge