How to make Anastasia's 'Once Upon A December' Dress

Dancing bears, painted wings, things I almost remember ... 

The iconic dress, that majestic song, and who could forget her glimmering crown? 

Me. I could forget her glimmering crown. Nevertheless, please continue to hum the tune whilst I present to you my version of Princess Anastasia's 'Once Upon A December' dress. 

Making this dress has been a dream of mine ever since I was little. Luckily, a fancy dress party finally pushed me into making it! One thing that I noticed when planning to make this dress was the lack of tutorials online for how to make it, making it almost completely up to me on how to approach it. 

My best advice to give to anyone making the dress would be to think of the dress in its most simple form. 

Classify the dress into these four parts:
1. The bodice
2. The sleeves
3. The skirt
4. The bows

Look for anything you have lying around that is of similar proportion or shape to the aspects of the dress. These are what you can use to base the dress around!

The material I used for the dress was satin (bodice, skirt and bow) and organza (sleeves). Looking around in the heart of Sydney's fabric capital, Cabramatta, I found the satin for an amazing $2 a metre! Given that I planned to also incorporate a lining, I needed to buy about 8 metres of yellow satin. I bought 1 metre of blue satin, and 2 metres of yellow organza. (which was at $1 per metre - crazy price I know!). I originally also wanted to put an underlay of organza to make the dress look puffy, but opted out on the idea because I like the look of a smooth fabric that drapes down effortlessly. 

1. The Bodice
Given that I am not a expert sewer, I felt that I needed to base the design of the bodice on an actual sewing pattern so it would be able to sit properly on my body. 
I used a dress pattern I already owned, specifically this one (Design C):

This pattern was able to allow me to easily put in sleeves that I had to draft based on the dress. I used the pieces that only relate to the bodice of Dress C in the pattern and followed the instructions. The pattern however didn't include instructions on how to do a lining BUT you can just make the bodice twice, turn them inside out and sew along the edges. And tada - you have a lining for your bodice! Be sure not to sew at the edges of the arm holes though - you need to keep these open for the sleeves.

2. The Sleeves 

For this part of the dress, most other cosplay outfits drafted this aspect from scratch. I basically created a winged-esque sleeve. It's not completely accurate to the sleeve in the movie, but still gives the idea.

Organza is a very light-weight fabric, so the threads are very VERY delicate. Make sure that when your sewing the sleeves, you have everything aligned and cut nicely. To achieve that flowing, floating look, I was not able to incorporate a lining here. As overlocking stitches aren't exactly the best look on an open sleeve, I chose to blanket stitch the raw edges with light yellow embroidery thread. You could also use bias tape to cover up the edges. 

3. The Skirt

I had two options for the skirt - a circle skirt or a gathered skirt. 

Given that I opted out of including a tutu beneath the dress, the gathered skirt would have the best the next option. The gather would give just a sight oomph to the dress, making it sit somewhat puffy at the waist. It was also the much easier option in terms of construction. 

Now this will only work if you have a fabric which is about 150cm wide. Think of entire width of the fabric as the skirt. 

I basically sewed a basic straight line stitch about 5 cm from the selvedge of about 4 metres of fabric. Once done, I pulled the threads until the fabric edge had become the same length as the waist on the bodice already made earlier. Sew a straight stitch over the new gathered fabric, then pin it together with your bodice. Sew another straight stitch, now allowing your bodice and skirt finally attached! 

Repeat this with another 4 metres of fabric to provide you with a lining for the skirt. 

You will now notice that the back seam of the entire dress now is completely open. This means it's now time to sew the zipper! The greatest thing about linings is that when sewing the zipper, all the raw edges are already tucked in so it all looks effortless and smooth! 

I used a nylon coil zipper for functionality, given that this was a costume and my hair would be down regardless (which would cover up the zipper). 

4. The bows 

This was probably the easiest part of the dress. 

The bow on the dress is seen to fall more than half way down the skirt! I underestimated the length I cut of my bows at the time, so make the dress bow about 2.8m in length, so it can fall nicely at the back of the dress. 

I didn't think much about the hair bow, just simply cut out 2 strips of blue fabric about 50cm in length, 15cm wide, and sewed the edges. I then tied it as a bow in my hair. 

Something I didn't do with the bow was use interfacing. Satin is a very light fabric and most of the time the bow would slightly droop down. To make the bow nice and upright, sew interfacing on the wrong side of the fabric so that it is more strong is able to take shape easier. 

The Finishing Product

Overall, I'm really happy with how it turned out! It really is such an iconic dress that I was surprised with how many people recognised that I was acting as Princess Anastasia at the party!

Thanks to the amazing prices at Cabramatta, I spent just over AUS$20 for the dress!
I like to think of this as: 
- less than a ticket to the movies
- less than my weekly transport expenses 
- less than buying 1 kg of prawns

The greatest thing about making this yourself is that every aspect of the dress is solely up to you - so make it yours.

Now I will catch a flight to St. Petersburg as my lovely Dimitri awaits.