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After making Halloweentown Sora, I decided that my next cosplay had to be ultra-girly. I really enjoyed CCS as a show, and in Spring of 2005 decided that my next cosplay, whenever that was, would be the opening dress. I am not going to make the actual costume until I get down to my target weight since I want to be fairly trim for the costume. However, I did decide that I could make the crinoline now, since that's easy to adjust the waist for.
The crinoline is just made of white muslin and white satin with lace on the bottom edge of the top two layers (like in the concept art). There are more layers to this darn thing than I can count, and when all's said and done it weights about 8 pounds. A wiser girl would have used tule, but I despise tule, so I did it all with muslin which will have the bejezus starched out of it for the final presentation. The picture below was taken with only the very most base layers starched. That's also the reason why it's difficult to tell the two top layers with their lace edges apart, even though the top-most layer is about an inch shorter. Once they are starched it will be visibe.
The crinoline was made by adding three ruffled strips to a layer above, then joining three of those the layer above that. Repeat til fluffy enough. The seams were covered with a satin strip to enclose the raw edges. The top most layer is only two tiers instead of three, so that the laced edge is appropriately ruffled.
When I took the picture below to show off the finished crinoline I thought it rather looked like the paintings Degas made of ballet dancers, so I incuded one for reference ;)
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