Pink in Wonderland

Over the top? Me? When I noticed a friend's b-day party my other half and me were attending had a Wonderland theme, I immediately got inspired! I had 8 meters of pink taffeta stashed away just waiting for an idea. Originally it was supposed to be a Lady Lovely Locks cosplay outfit, but the hair and flattening my boobs kinda sounded uncomfortable. So in comes Wonderland!

I already had a little teacup hat I made a few years ago for another party with the same theme, and I wanted to try if I could alter the robe d'anglaise pattern I got for hybrid between it and a robe a la francaise. The francaise has a stomacher instead of the hooks and eyes front closure of the anglaise, and francaise usually has large back pleats and a hidden lacing in the back. All of those pleats and lacing sounded like too much work, so I just sliced the anglaise pattern to have the same back and a stomacher in the front. To save even more time (and nerves) the stomacher attaches to the dress with snap tape. I'm thinking that this way I could make interchangeable stomachers for different looks, and even alter the waist circumference a bit to suit different corsets underneath.

There were some tricky parts, like running out of matching thread even though I bough a hundred meter spool, and pleating all that hem to fit the bodice, and then the blasted ruffles! All the ruffles had to be sewn by hand and I absolutely hate that. At least this time I didn't poke myself with the need and leave bloody finger prints all over the dress, but I still hated it. I think I cut the ruffles too narrow, which made them bunch up impossibly so that attaching them to the bodice was slow. The ruffles wanted to twist and I had to be extra careful to make sure everything was the right way around. Then again I doubt it would have been obvious even if the ruffle had so twists here and there.

The dress with pannier hoops. Sorry about the too long petticoat hanging out!
This was the first time I got to wear the ensemble and see how it came together.

Here the dress is worn with a white undershirt (for modesty ;D) on top of a correct corset, and a tulle petticoat,
no pannier hoops.

The cute little muffin earrings are made by a friend. Thanks Anniina!

The "polonaise" top skirt is actually floor length, I just gathered it up with ties and two
safety pins to go with a short skirt instead. I don't have enough fabric to do a long skirt with
the same pink, but maybe I could find some more of the fabric.

For the stomacher I wanted to do decorations with ribbons to avoid having to do something
slow, like embroidery. I originally wanted to have matching pink ribbons, but the local haberdashery
shop did not have anything matching, so I chose a complimenting olive shade.

I got extra ribbon to use as a bracelet, necklace and to tie some in my hair and on the sleeves.
There no olive ribbon actually sewn to rest of the gown, so I can change the colour scheme
if I feel like it. 

All. Those. Pleats! I was losing my mind with pleating the skirt, and it's not perfect, but close enough!

The teacup got some olive ribbon and a few slices of the pink fabric, finished with pinking
scissors.

The teacup hat is a  actual teacup glued to a hairband with epoxy. I had glued some rhinestones
on the last time I used it, but those came off easily, so I just used ribbons for decoration.

The party was great, lots of people and delicious pastries! It was along day as my other half and I came back from Helsinki and stopped by to change summer tires to the car and help clean out my family's summer cottage. I beat the sofa pillows with a tennis racket (there was no carpet to be found) until I had blisters on my hands, but boy where those pillows dusty! So we did just a quick, few hour stop at the party and headed home to catch some sleep. I was glad to see I wasn't the only one who likes theme parties, people had awesome outfits!