Elsa's Coronation Dress - sewing

It's now time to sew the dress. For me, the fun part.

 By now all the pieces should have all the motifs in place. But to catch up ...

Read blog #1 about cutting here.
And blog #2 about applying the motifs.

The first step is to join the upper and lower, front and back bodice pieces. To do this, mark the lap line on the upper bodice pieces. This is 1" above the cut line.

Lap and pin on the lower portion and zig zag in place.

Then sew the darts. Here are the front and back bodice pieces ready to go.

To prepare the collar for sewing, fuse the interfacing on one piece, then draw the center front line and the stitching lines (5/8" from the cut line) onto the interfacing.

To make the little split in the front of the collar, draw slanted lines starting 1/4" from the center line at the top of the collar that tapers to the center line at the bottom.

Round the front corners with something round. You probably have a spool hanging around somewhere ... ha ha

Pin the two layers of the collar together and stitch along the upper line going down and up the split. 

Trim and clip the seam.

Turn and press.

Sew the front and back bodice together at the shoulder seam. Stay stitch the neck at the 5/8" seam line., so it can be clipped into and open up straight to fit the collar.

Because of the front vent in the collar, it has to be sewn to the neck differently than the instructions that came with the pattern say.

Pin and sew the neckline to both layers of the collar all at once.

This is what it will look like. The seam allowance needs to be trimmed to about 1/4", clipped and then edge stitched to hold it downward towards the bodice.

I zig zagged over the collar seam after it was trimmed and clipped, before edge stitching it down.

Sew the side seams and set in the sleeves according to pattern directions.

Remember I said to not apply the motifs at the back of the skirt at either side? Well now is the time to deal with this.  Those outer most stitching lines are about to become the new center back seam of the skirt.

Draw a new cutting line 5/8" from this line and continue this line straight up to the top of the skirt ... 

then trim the excess skirt fabric all along this line.


This is probably a good time to remove all those machine basting lines used to evenly place all the motifs.  To do this, pull out the back side of the stitching and then clip all the loose threads on the front around the motif pieces.

Gather and sew the skirt to the bodice, but still leave the back seam open. Redistribute the gathers to make up for a bit of the skirt being cut off.

NOTE ABOUT SKIRT ... The movie version of this dress has more of a flared skirt and not so many gathers.  I almost sewed a bunch of darts to make it less full at the waist, but decided to leave this dress with the skirt as is.  I do plan to taper in the skirt on Anna's winter dress, when I make that in a week or so.

Apply the gold braid over the lapped join in the bodice and over the waist seam.

Leave the ends on both sides loose.  After the zipper is in those ends will be hand stitched.

To sew up the back skirt seam, first undo a bit of the hem on both sides.  Stitch the seam from the bottom edge to where the zipper will start, press and fix the open part of the hem.

Now those last three motif groups can be applied.

Set the zipper in and tidied up the ends of the braid.

Take care to make the braid match up when the zipper is closed.


So the dress is finished now ... on to the cape tomorrow!