Princess Anna of Arendelle Coronation Dress Construction Notes

*click on the pictures to make them larger

One of my favorite princess dress! It was lots of work especially on the skirt. Making the skirt flow and not clump together was the hardest part! The designs I used are from the Frozen film and not from the artbook/doll design. For the film it was explained that for her design the bodice is made out of velvet, grosgrain ribbon for the bodice, velvet for the choker, satin shantung for the sleeves, silk satin for the dark green skirt, and body silk/or body silk crepe wool blend for the light green part of the skirt. I used fabrics that were close to the original material texture and similar colors. I did not use similar fabrics from the film because I work on a budget (I like to use fabrics I have or find nice discounted fabrics). I found using shiny fabric for the skirt to be distracting so I went with something matte. Here I’ll try to explain on how I made the coronation dress.

☆ Wig
*New* The wig was same wig I bought for my travel costume here. I added orange to some strands with sharpie by hand. For this wig I also sewed on a weft from Irisviel’s wig about where the parting starts. The second time I wore the wig, the styling was inspired by Disney Park’s coronation Anna wig. With the help of my twin sister we used lots of bobby pins to keep the braid and the twisting of the hair to stay in place. The braid starts at the side of my wig (right or left it doesn’t matter) then tied with a rubber-band, make sure the wig at the sides covers where the rubberband is. We took a thick strand at the back, twist it tightly, hair sprayed, and secured it with bobby pins (this part takes time). Then the rest of the back hair and some side hairs is tucked in like a waterfall look and pinned (use a lot of bobby pins)! Curly strands added to the sides with a curling iron.

☆Bodice
I modified a Simplicity 2400 pattern B for the bodice. The bodice is velvet and it has channels for the boning. For the bodice I looked at this site: http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-Corset/. It’s extremely helpful. The zipper on the bodice is on the side to allow embroidery design to the back. All the embroidery for the bodice is done by hand on a different fabric since I had a hard time embroidering on the velvet. When I was done with embroidery I added heat n’ bond on the back of each embroidery and glue them onto the bodice using fabric glue. I suggest to look at this site if you’re new to embroidery: http://www.instructables.com/id/Embroidery-101/. I don’t know the exact fabric name for the sleeves on the bodice, but it looks like crepe satin with embroidery details on it. I painted the lace for the sleeves green with mixed acrylic paint and textile medium. It was hand sewn to the slightly pleated sleeves. I made my own bias tape for the the sweetheart neckline of the bodice – I always have trouble here. It takes practice! Buy pre-made bias tape if you have trouble making your own.

☆Necklace & clip (hair comb)
The necklace and hair comb are made out of super sculpey and I used a x-acto knife and pencil to carve in the details. In the first photo I used a satin ribbon, but the second photo I bought a velvet ribbon – which I think looks better. It’s attached in the back via clasp. For the three ribbons on the hair comb, I tried looking for the same fabric color I used for the skirt in my fabric box. I glued the ribbons to the back of the hair comb.

☆Skirt
The skirt is a total of 10 panels and are long trapezoidal shape. The skirt is box pleated, so the dark green fabric is cut into 3 sections and sewn together and the light green  is cut into two and sewn together with the medium green fabric. I used hunter green rodeo bottomweight for the dark green and the other greens I found in my sewing box. They look to be a mixture of cotton and polyester.

I don’t have an embroidery machine to make the embroidery details, so I was not planning to do all skirt detail with hand embroidery. Still the skirt took forever! I used whatever paper I had and made a big design starting at the bottom and worked my way up to the top by tracing the big design and making it smaller and smaller. For the designs on the skirt I used left over fabrics I had and heat n’ bond onto the skirt. I used sequins for the blue circle designs (also pink sequins on the bodice). Overall the heat n’ bond looked pretty good and they all looked about the same size. Once the skirt was done I added a waistband with an elastic band in order to easily get in. It’s a pain to iron the skirt, it is so heavy with all the fabric weight. I used a petticoat under the skirt bought from here: Petticoat underskirt no hoop. It looks much better than using a hoop skirt. Add more tulle to the petticoat for more poof! That’s what I did the second time I wore this costume.

☆ Eye contacts and makeup
I used QT H-type 3-tone Super Turquoise eye contacts from kiwiberry1-collection. They are comfortable and the color looks great in good lighting. I use E.l.f products for the brushes, blush (Fuchsia Fusion color), freckles, and eyeliner. I use Ben Nye for the foundation. For the lips I’ve recently tried E.l.f’s jumbo lip gloss lipstick (for $2!), it works great! The eyelashes are from eBay (Search: specialized made by hand entirely), it comes with many packs of different types of eyelashes.

-C