Queen Elinor from Brave

Queen Elinor was completed in October 2017 for my mother to wear as part of a small Brave group for Rhode Island Comic Con. After making my mom a Mother Gothel costume a couple of year ago for Halloween she is much more on board with cosplaying with me and my sister. Since I already purchased a crazy orange wig for Maid Marian, cosplaying Merida made sense. This group was a no brainer!

This dress was truly a collaboration between me and my mother. She hand sewed a lot of the hems, cut out nearly all of the fabric, and made all of the covered buttons. We had a great time bonding while sewing and I am so excited to work with her on future costumes!

The dress was created from an altered Simplicity pattern. I changed up the sleeves, front closure, and neckline. The body of the dress is made out of a beautiful drapery weight satin with a green and gold crossweave. I created additional color and detail by satin stitching rows of lines throughout the pattern pieces using embroidery thread. The process took a while but I am very happy with the result! The dress is worn over a very simple green crushed satin dress that was made using a simple elastic waist dress pattern from See and Sew.

I created the belt and the crown from Worbla using the sandwich method. I especially had a great time creating the crown. I'm still learning my way around manipulating Worbla cleanly and with precision so this was definitely a learning experience. I took screencaps from the movie to work out the details on the crown and then traced it onto brown paper for scale. I used painted buttons embedded into the worbla for the 3D elements on the crown. 

I purchased the wig from Arda and added a pack of extensions for the pigtails and a small white clip in extension for the stripe.