IKEA Fabric 18th Century Round Gown

In May, I made an 18th century round gown to wear to Colonial Williamsburg. I’ll post photos later from the trip (assuming I ever catch up on photo processing), but I wanted to post a couple of quick photos of the dress.

Ikea 18th century round gown

A lot of people in the historical costuming community have made dresses using duvet covers and curtains from IKEA. I needed a breathable fabric for the heat of Williamsburg and I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on fabric, so an IKEA duvet cover was a perfect choice.

Ball Shaped Hoop Skirt for Jigglypuff

For Halloween this year, my girls wanted to be Pokemon. I let them pick which ones, and they picked Pikachu (ok that doesn’t seem too bad), and Jigglypuff (ohmigod big pink ball… how do I do that???) After some consultation with Marcus, we decided that the costume would be a big ball shape worn over a jumpsuit. The ball part of Jigglypuff would be a ball shaped hoop skirt (like a Chinese lantern) with plastic boning, so it’d be collapsible and lightweight.

Jigglypuff and Pikachu kid costumes

I was really happy with how it came out because it was all pretty theoretical until about… 2 days before Halloween when I finally got it working. I did a lot of Googling to try to find if anyone else had done something similar, but I wasn’t able to find anything. I ended up having to try a couple different things before I got the understructure working properly.

So here’s a quick tutorial for anyone else who wants to build a giant ball structure out of fabric and boning.

Tako Sun Hat

Last month, I released my very first PDF pattern: the Tako Sun Hat. I’ve been meaning to blog about it but somehow, I never got around to sitting down and doing it. I suppose it’s because I don’t really have a whole lot to say other than: first foray into PDF Patterns… yay! =D

Tako Sun Hat