Drumroll, Please...DRUMROLL! Thank you.

I have officially finished my Susan Pevensie costume!!! At last!

It all started when I saw Prince Caspian. I had been a huge fan of Narnia when the first one came out, so when I saw Prince Caspian, I fell back in love with it.

Anyway, I suddenly became very interested in making one of Susan's costumes. My original plan was to make her green LLW dress...but then I saw this picture:


Don't ask why, I couldn't tell you, but I really loved it. So I started looking around on The Wardrobe Door ( a great site if you want to make a Narnia costume). I checked out the page on Susan's purple dress, where I read about a lot of things that probably went into the real costume--on Isis Mussenden's budget, with her weavers, crew and experience--not mine. So...I started looking for a pattern that would work well and make the costume just perfectly, but I couldn't find one. So, being a perfectionist (strike that: a selective perfectionist) I decided to make my own. That equaled: "oops! I am tired! I just want to be done! I have this big mess to clean up now! Those pieces are uneven!"

Anyway, I made my own pattern. I started with just some newspaper, a tape measure and two and two makes four. If you do try this, however, try to make yourself a dress form, it would have really helped with measuring and fitting...trying to measure your own shoulders accurately is such a pain!

I gave in after a rather poor attempt of making a pattern for the skirt. I decided to use this pattern:


(sorry, it's a little big) I used petticoat D, which is the one without the ruffle.

Creating the split was really rather easy...after I had given it some calm, cool and collected thought. What I did was this: measure the front of the skirt and find the middle. Then, I sewed a seam with a very small seam allowance (to try to keep the skirt at the size I wanted it). One tip about that, though: don't be over-zealous about "small seam allowances"...make it large enough to serge, otherwise you'll get fraying. After ironing down the finished seam, I just cut very carefully through the little "loop" that was made by the seam and then seam ripped it. It worked very nicely.

For the bodice and bodice lining, I sewed the princess seams of the bodice up, but left it in two pieces (front and back). Then, I laid out the lining, cut it and sewed the boning too it. I sewed the lining to bodice right sides together and then turned them out like a bag, joining the front and back together.

For the sleeves, I made a pattern ( again, look at the write- up on this costume on the wardrobe door), sewed them together, and then sewed them to the armholes.

That was pretty much it, and the rest is very self explanatory. If you have any questions, please ask them in the comment form.

And here are some photos of the finished product:







I'm afraid that I need to stop smiling...my "beam" isn't very Narnian queen-ish :). It's not as perfect as the picture I had in my mind was, but I am pleased with how well it turned out, considering that it was my first real try.