The cloak is complete!

I’ve finished the cloak part of my Queen Padmé Amidala parade gown / end of Star Wars Phantom Menace costume.

It took a while to sew the rolled edges of the petals. I used off-cut fabric, including scraps from my wedding dress and bridesmaid’s dresses! The fabric was slippy, appropriately rebellious, and delicate, so I had to concentrate, but I could have the TV or radio on in the background, so it was not too intense an experience! I think the petals took 2 weeks or so to edge (working after work), 3 days to sew on, and the muslin cloak structure took half a day.

At first I resolved not to pin on the petals to the muslin, as I wanted to sew the petals straight on to speed up the process. However, I ended up pinning them all so that I could get the colour balance right, and it was not as boring a process as you might think, I actually enjoyed it!

When you look at the real dress the petal pattern appears random and chaotic, but its actually just complicated, and that’s why its so well balanced and nice to look at. The petals at the bottom are larger, I had 3 different sizes with some random variation in size between them. At the front there is a grouping of yellow cream petals towards the bottom that I tried to replicate.

In the real costume the petals were dyed, but I don’t have much time, space or experience in this, and I wanted to reuse scrap fabric, so I just mixed the colours instead.

I am thoroughly enjoying swanning around in it.

Next step is to create the ‘parasol’ part of the costume.