It’s been a hot minute since I last posted because there’s been so much life happening. Good life things — working, traveling, sewing — but things that take away from posting nonetheless. Hard to believe that we’re now only about 2 weeks out from the 2024 Her Universe Fashion Show! And since I won last year, I’ll be judging this year! I’m currently working on my look for judging which I’ll have to post about after the fact.
In the meantime, I’ve got a few more posts on my look from last year. It’ll be nice to look back and get this wrapped up as we head into the competition for this year. This particular post is about some of the mistakes I made before posting about the accessories. If you’re just tuning in, this is Part 11 of my series on my Totally Minnie look that was chosen as the Judges’ Choice Winner for the Her Universe Fashion Show 2023. If you want to see the rest of the posts about the construction, I recommend starting with this post.
Most of my construction posts make it seem like everything went super smoothly. That’s not actually the case. There were 2 major pieces that really didn’t go well and I ended up wasting much needed, valuable time on them. I assure you there were tears when I realized that the 3 days I spent working on a petticoat was for nothing. So let’s start with the petticoat.
Tulle Petticoats Are Not Strong Enough
For my wedding, I had a big ballgown style dress. (Are we surprised? No, didn’t think so). At the time, I was unaware of the beauty and function of hoop skirts. I hadn’t yet started my true journey into costuming and couture design so I had a giant multi-layered tulle petticoat that I used to give it body. I think my mom picked it up at a garage sale. I loved the way it made the skirt move, with body but softness.
So I had this “brilliant” idea that was going to make a huge red tulle petticoat to go under my skirt and give it the body I wanted. I bought a ton of tulle from Tulle Source and I found this great tutorial by Rockstars and Royalty about making a large tulle petticoat/skirt. I also got a binder (see Part 5: Tooling Around) and a bunch of red satin ribbon because I find the edges of tulle scratchy so I was going bind all the edges if I had time. I now know there was no way I would have had time.
I drafted a 3/4 circle skirt pattern because I thought that would be sufficient under my dress (mistake #1) and started cutting layers of tulle. The tulle itself was great. It was nice stiff stuff. I recommend Tulle Source if you need large quantities of tulle in a variety of colors. I actually did end up going to Joann’s and getting even more tulle. They had something similar but not as good a price or size.
I followed the tutorial and the skirt started to take shape.
After I got quite a few layers, I decided to try it out.
Total failure. (Note the photo is the first layer, but honestly even with 3 more layers it wasn’t that much better.) There was absolutely no way that the tulle was going to be able to support a skirt this heavy. I would have needed SO MUCH tulle. Way more than the 12 or so layers I was planning. I probably would have needed closer to 30. Enough that just the sheer thickness of the tulle would be holding it up. So mistake #2 was that I completely underestimated the strength of a tulle skirt.
And back to mistake #1, the 3/4 circle skirt was nowhere near big enough. I had only done 3/4 circle skirt because I was accounting for the slit and didn’t want the petticoat poking through, but the slit is actually such a small part of the circumference that I should have done a full circle. But that didn’t matter since it wasn’t going to be strong enough to support it anyways.
I had spent 3 days on this, cutting and attaching to the skirt. I’m sure I got other things done in between to give my knees a rest, but it was still a lot of time that I did not have to waste. I was pretty devastated when I realized this (I’m sure I cried for a spell), but I quickly switched gears to work on the hoop skirt instead. I had been storing the dress on a hoop skirt to have an idea of what it would look like, so that was a pretty obvious next step. However, the hoop skirt needed to have a slit so I was super nervous about figuring out a way to do that since I had never seen a hoop skirt with a slit. But if you’ve stuck with me through this journey, you know I did figure it out (see Part 9: Hoop There It Is).
The petticoat is current crunched up in a bag. I’ve got an idea of how I might use it, so I think I’m going to continue on with it and see what I can do with it.
Oh, and I also thought I would do a layer of tulle under each of the 6 layers of the skirt for extra lift. However, after this debacle I knew that a single layer of tulle wasn’t going to do anything, so I completely abandoned that. I still have a ton of red tulle sitting at home as you can see above (that photo was taken recently). I’ll either use it for party decoration or donate it to our local craft donation hub.
3D Hair Looks Like Cosplay Not Couture
When I worked on the original design, the sketch had a big hair bow. I was going big on everything in this dress, so I thought I would do the same for the hair. My goal was to do it as a black wig (since Minnie’s “hair” is black) so that I could just pop it on at the event and not have to worry about my hair. Hair is always super hard for me when I got to events. It’s always the last thing on my mind and I can never seem to get it looking how I want. Probably because I always leave it until last. A wig seemed like a good solution to front load the work.
I read a whole bunch of tutorials on making shaped cosplay wigs, particularly The Art of Extreme Wig Styling by Cowbutt Crunchies Cosplay and Wig Styling for Cosplay by Kinpatsu Cosplay. I bought the wefts. And I designed the shape I wanted and 3D printed it.
The 3D printing and modeling was actually quite fun. I went through several iterations to get a headband that fit my head and added a pole off it.
Then I designed a massive bow with a hole in it that could slide onto the headband so it would be easy to pack and put together. All good, right?
Now it was time to cover with hair. Well, those cosplay folks make this look hella easier than it actually is. (The above is a test with a failed print and test wefts.) A number of the other designers have a lot more experience with this kind of thing and at some point, I’d love to learn how to actually do this correctly, but I was so not doing this right.
I used the recommended glues. I used the recommended hair spray. I did it in pieces. I tried so hard.
And the end result, as my husband thoughtfully put it, “looks like a primary school project.” I was devastated. He was right.
Additionally, it looked way more cartoon-y (not in a good way) and more like Kiki’s Delivery Service than Minnie Mouse. This was all happening the week before I had to leave and I still had actual costume work to do, so I was freaking out a little bit. See look of resignation above.
Ultimately, after some internet searching for “hair bows” I came across a tutorial for making a bow out of one’s own hair. I realized that this actually looked way more couture than the giant mess I was originally planning to go with. I did have to allow a lot more time to do my hair the day of the competition, but things worked out for the best.
Photo by Mark Edwards Photography
Overall, although I didn’t realize it at the time and I won’t deny that there were tears, the mistakes were a great learning experience. Due to the time pressure of the contest, I really didn’t have a lot of time to freak out about them and had to move on quickly and find a new solution (after some solid crying). It taught me that not only will things work out one way or another, but sometimes they’re even better than you expected or planned.
