Making a Princess Bubblegum Cosplay Dress

I was around my friend Keely's  house when she started talking about a Fancy dress event called INVASION COLCHESTER! Her and her family were planning on going as characters from Adventure Time, a strange cartoon for children set in what appears to be a post apocalyptic nuclear wasteland. My friend was stressing about getting a dress to become "Princes Bubblegum". I asked why she didn't just make one. "It's okay for you with a full sewing room and hundreds of reference books, it's much harder  to make things up as you go along". Challenge accepted. Can I make an affordable costume (around £20) using a standard sewing gear and no fancy or difficult techniques.

Many of these ideas would work just as well for a Halloween costume. 

Step one - Reference

What does Prince Bubblegum look like?
The dress looks simple enough, puffy sleeves, tight bodice, long skirt section. Then a contrasting collar and belt.

Step two- Initial planning

I decided to make a pattern for a tight-ish bodice and a floor length circle skirt. These would be sewn together at the waist and the belt would hide the seam. The whole garment would be made of poly cotton and have a zip fastening at the back. Initially I was going to leave the seams untreated and the garment unlined, however my friend said she would like to be able to wear it a few times. As a result I quickly change my  plans to make the dress more durable.  The bodice section would be lined and all exposed seams would be bias bound. The hem of the circle dress would be bias bound as well.

Step three - Making a pattern

Normally in my studio I have proper pattern paper or brown paper. However these aren't essential. You can just tape newspaper sheets together. use MASKING tape however and not sellotape. If need be later on you can iron your pattern if you use masking tape but sellotape will melt everywhere. You can also draw on masking tape much easier than sellotape.


I didn't have access to my books and so I had to come up with a pattern off the top of my head.
I can not stress the following enough- There is no supbstitute for a good pattern or a pattern making book.
However here's what I did. I drew a rectangle that measured 2cm more than my friends' nape (bottom of neck) to waist measurement high. The width was half her bust plus 5cm. I worked the neck out by measuring her neck and adding some ease this is VERY unscientific. The waist darts are easier, just take the difference between the bust and the waist and half it (as the pattern makes half a garment). The amount left is the amount you have to dart into the waist.I guessed at what angle the should sloped at and then drew in the arm hole, going down as far as the bust line.

Once the pattern was drawn  I cut it out, and then cut up through the bust darts, the side dart and the back dart. This left me with 3 pattern pieces.

Step four - Cutting out fabric

The fabric was folded selvedges together and the centre bodice panel placed on the fold. The pattern has NO SEAM ALLOWANCE. At home I'd use a seam guide to ass a traditional 5'8 of an inch seam. However I was back to basics here and so I fashioned a guide out of a cereal packet.




Step five - Making up

Construction of the bodice was relatively simple.  Just sew the panels together, right  sides together. The sleeves were slightly trickier. Now  here I went totally off track. I knew the sleeves were going to be VERY puffy, this gave me a lot of wiggle  room in design. I just taped the pattern together  the shoulders to give me the outline of the arm hole. I drew this on to some newspaper and then stretched the design making it Twice as wide and nearly twice as high. I then added 15cm to the bottoms length for the actual sleeve.

I removed the seam allowances from the arm hole of the LINING and bias bound it. Each sleeve was sewn along it's length and then pleated into the armhole of the bodice.

A pattern for the collar was made the same was as the sleeves with it being cut at the back for the zip.


Before the collar and lining were attached to the bodice  the circle skirt had to be made and attached.
Check out our guide on " How to make a circle skirt ".

The seams of the circle skirt were pressed open and bias bound and the hem was bias bound.
The collar was basted with minimal seam allowance to the neckline and the circle skirt was sewn to the bodice. All that remained was sewing the lining around the neck hole and  then pulling the dress right side out and pressing it. I tacked the lining to the bodice around the shoulders and around the waist as well to give it stability.








Final Thoughts.

This post isn't one of my typical "how to make" posts. It's more a collection if ideas and concepts. If you are not sure how to make something just get some poly cotton and give it a go, fly hands free once in a while, you may surprise yourself by your own ingenuity.

How do you get a design onto your t-shirt or other fabric?

Have you ever suddenly realised you had mixed up your party invites and you had a costume party to go to in one hour? This happened to me and my girlfriend a few weeks ago. We ran into my sewing room all set to fulfil the brief of the party, we had to bring out our inner geek. I took the quick and simple option and just put on one of my many Star Wars T-shirts. My girlfriend wanted to put a design onto an old t-shirt, in less than an hour! We didn't have time for Dylon Image Maker, we only had time for pens, and weirdly enough, Wundaweb.

We had some fabric pens and permanent markers, however we only had one shot to make this work. The initial design was a little complex with plenty of chances to make mistakes. If you're wondering it was an image of "Serenity" from Firefly. If we could trace the design onto the fabric first it would certainly reduce the chances of messing things up. We had to think outside the box and use some of our dressmaking kit in new and interesting ways. 

 Option 1

Drawing out a design in free hand first with Taylors Chalk before filling it in with Fabric Paint or Fabric Pen.

If you find the triangular dressmaking chalk tricky to use then  there are Dressmaking Chalk Pencils out there as well as a special Vanishing Fabric Marker.

Handy if the design is relatively simple, but what if you have a more complicated design?

Option 2

Trace the design onto the fabric using Dressmakers Carbon Paper. This handy bit of dressmaking kit is normally used to transfer markings such as dart lines onto your fabric.  Dressmakers Carbon Paper actually comes in a lot of colours, and not in 'carbon'. Most packs have blue, red and yellow as well as white so finding a sheet to show up on your fabric should be easy. Place the 'carbon' paper onto the fabric (coloured side down) and then pop your design over the paper. Use a tracing wheel to transfer the design onto your fabric, and then use paint and pens to  fill it in.

Time was  running short  and whilst option 2 would work very well we couldn't get a print out of the design the right size. So a change of plan was in order. Pac-Man! Well more accurately one of the ghosts (who by the way are called "Blinky" "Pinky" "Inky" and "Clyde").  A "Blinky" was drawn out on graph paper to ensure it was nice and 'blocky'. The graph paper pattern was then used to cut the ghost out in some non fray velour. Eyes and pupils were cut out of felt. The pupils where added to the eyes with Wundaweb instant hemming tape, then the eyes were stuck to the body with wundaweb and then the whole ghost to the t-shirt with Wundaweb. Wundaweb Instant  Hemming tape is easy to use. You just place it between the two layers of fabric and then iron your garment. A pressing cloth isn't essential but gives a much better finish. One unique geeky t-shirt made in under 15 minutes. Instant hemming tape is normally good for 15 washes so it should last a while.

So next time you have to make something special in a flash DON'T PANIC! Just look around your sewing box and think how you can use things a little differently.