Rapunzel

For Halloween, Gwyneth wanted to dress up as Rapunzel.

Tangled is her favorite movie and so we I had lots of fun making this dress.  Pascal (the green lizard) was from the movie as well, although I didn’t make him.

We had an excellent backdrop for photos here in the city (Minneapolis).  The tower in the background is the Witch’s Hat Tower in Prospect Park (You can read more about it here, if you’re interested.)  It’s one of the original water towers in the city.  Gwyneth Rapunzel absolutely loved playing around the tower, despite the chilly 50 degree weather.  (Don’t worry, her coat was handy to put on between photos.)

For the dress:: I began with a pattern from Simplicity (2065) and made a few changes in construction and the decoration.

I used all cotton for the fabrics (and lace).  The majority of the fabric was KONA in purple.  The exterior skirt was Country Classic Cotton Solids – in purple.  I’ve never used the latter cotton fabric (and I won’t ever again).  I wanted the exterior skirt to be very slightly darker than the underskirt (just like Rapunzels’) and that was the best match I could get without ordering more fabric online.  Well let me just say, I will never consider myself a fabric snob again.  The quality difference was obvious when sewing side by side.

Without realizing it, I conducted a comparison of the two cottons.  I had similarly cut fabric pieces for the exterior and interior skirt (one in KONA another in the inexpensive cotton), used the same thread, same wound bobbin, same needle and the same machine.  The Country classic cotton kept getting threads caught by the needle and pulled the fabric.  Thus there were many tiny created puckers and it was just awful.  The KONA sewed perfectly — no thread pulling, no puckers.   It was perfect.

Anyway. . . . I digress.

The bodice has grommets with decorative lacing.  The stripes on the sleeves were made with cotton bias tape laid flat and sewn into place.  I decided not to add the long sleeves with lace or netting on the bottom — it just felt like it would rip while playing.  Instead I just added a bit more lace at the bottom of the sleeve (which matches the bottom of the underskirt).

The overskirt detail matches Rapunzel’s dress pretty well.  I carved a stamp (directions for carving a stamp can be found here) and used some tulip glitter fabric paint in purple.  At the bottom edge I just made a few dots in the paint.  The underskirt has cotton eyelet lace all the way around the bottom along with some decorative leaf stitching that my machine does.

Rapunzel’s wig kept getting in her face and all over, so we braided it and it worked much better.

Well, this Rapunzel is very happy with her dress (and the fact that she’s out of the tower at last). . .

and ready to dance and spin . . . . . and trick-or-treat!