Sooo I’ve been spending two weeks of my summer sewing. I might turn this into a cosplay blog, but maybe not because I have more doodles than sewing projects. However, when I get my scanner back, expect more doodles~

But for now, for my first summer project this year I’ve decided to start doing Anna’s green dress from Frozen. 

It’s not much of a tutorial, rather my method. You can choose to follow it or not, it depends entirely upon your taste.

'Righty then. I'll update this when I finally get a decent camera to take a picture of the end result, but for now, we're looking at a pleated circle skirt with an A-line hoop skirt with a petticoat for her green skirt and a separate black sweetheart bodice with sleeves. 

Edit: Clarifying that the unit of measurement in this is in inches.

I started with the skirt. The mere formula kept me up all night. 

The skirt:

So the skirt has a total of 20 panels sewn to form a full circle. 10 outer panels and 10 inner panels. It appears as an A-line dress while she standing, but when Anna runs or jumps, it expands, revealing the green panels beneath it.

You’ll need 3 shades of green for this. I don’t know what kind of fabric to suggest because I used leftover fabric from my previous projects. lel

Sooo take out your calculators!

Also, just a tip, ya might want to round up off your numbers to the nearest tenths.

We’re going to get the measurement of the panels. All of the panels must have equal measurement so the formula below will give you your panel dimensions tailored to your size.

To begin, we take your waistline and divide it by 3.14. What you get is the diameter. So divide it by 2 and you get your radius.

So, what do I do with the radius? You take your radius and add it to how long you want your skirt to be. From your waist to a few inches above the floor. Multiply the sum by 6.28 to get the total circumference of the skirt. Yeah, that’s a whole lotta fabric, but hey, it’s fun to twirl around in.

Take the circumference then divide it by 20 (The 20 here is the total panels as stated before. You can choose to alter this to your liking. However, it HAS to be an even number with equal inner panels and outer panels.) What you get is the width of the bottom of the trapezoid. Yay! Almost done with the formula!

We have the length and width of the lower side of the trapezoid, now all we need is the upper measurement. This is really simple and all you have to do is divide your waistline with half of the total number of panels. (In this case, we divide it by 10.)

But wait! We’re not yet done with the calculators! Remember that the outer panels have 3 segments. There are two light-toned parts on either side of the outer panel. To get this, we take the measurement of the upper side of the trapezoid and multiply it by 0.25 to get the width of the upper part of the outer segments. We repeat this and replace the width of the upper part of the trapezoid with the measurement of the bottom side of the trapezoid.

So carry on and sew all the panels together and add in the designs on her skirt while you still can— easily that is (You can embroider it, use iron on adhesive or go with stencil painting.)

You can choose to add lining, but it doesn’t necessarily have to follow the actual skirt’s measurements. It could be a simple gathered skirt beneath.  

Pin the outer panels together, box pleats as an end result. (If you need a tutorial of box pleats I can assure you there are lots of tutorials online that can help you much more than what I can explain)

After, you can put on the waistband and zipper. I don’t suggest using elastic waistband though.

Moving onto the hoop skirt. Although you can skip this, I’d just like to add this in.

Since I didn’t need more than one hoop, I just got the measurements of the bottom panels. To get the circumference you need for the hoop, just take the measurement of the bottom of the trapezoid and multiply it by how many outer panels you have. Take away a few inches or centimeters for your petticoat so the hoop doesn’t show up much when you drape over the actual skirt.

The support is just a gathered skirt with a single hoop at the bottom and a petticoat with an elastic waistband

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yeAH Skirt is done! Boo yeah! Give yourself a pat on the back!

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Moving onto the bodice, it’s a sweetheart neckline. I used velvet for the black part. (Yes, how /do/ I add in the designs aside from embroidery? I’m not sure. OTL) It’s a 7-part bodice that reaches up the upper part of the hips. This is the pattern I came up with:

Because I did trial and error to come up with my bodice. (The stores here don’t sell patterns at ALL which really sucks :/)

Of course, this thing has lining too. With channels to place the boning in. I had to use the plastic ones they sell by the yard since spiral boning isn’t available locally. Again. 

I added a built in bra and an opening zipper located at the left to allot space for the design at the back.

The trim was just bias. The sleeves were just rectangles of leftover fabric from the inner panels of the skirt with lace sticking out on the lower side of the sleeve. They just droop on your arm, so stiff fabrics are not recommended. 

The Hairpiece and Necklace is made of air-dry clay with ribbons. The hairpiece is just an old, broken comb base. While the pendant had a base with an existing hole to thread the ribbon through.

Should there be any questions, my ask box is open.