A good friend of mine recently asked me to help her make a costume for Zenkaikon. She had already chosen her character, Anya.
When I pick my costumes, I spend hours, or days, researching everything that's needed. Here's the advice I gave her.
Step 1: Find your costume (check!)
Step 2: google the **** out of that *****. Check everything. Look at ones other people made. Check for possible tutorials or guides. See if anyone said what patterns they used or how they drafted them. SAVE EVERYTHING
Step 3: Find as many pictures as you can from every angle. Since it's a cartoon and not a "real" dress, it'll be harder to make screen accurate. Cartoons generally don't use buttons or zippers to get dressed, they use magic. So if you can't see how it would be possible for a live person to put on, decide how you want that to work. (Zippers can be made "invisible" as long as they are on a seam)
Step 4: Find patterns. Check Simplicity, Butterick, and McCalls websites.
http://butterick.mccall.com/
http://mccallpattern.mccall.com/
http://www.simplicity.com/
In terms of costumes, Vogue is eh. Overpriced for some of the same things as the others, so ignore that brand. Stay away from the "Out of Print" section unless you find one that is EXACTLY right. Then try to get it on eBay, etsy, wherever for cheaper. (Also, remember pattern sizes are not the same as dress sizes. Use the size chart based on measurements) For any of the current patterns, Joanns has sales almost every weekend. All of the brands will be on sale at some point for either 99cents or 1.99 so don't worry when you see the 10-25$ original price.
Step 5: Decide on fabric. Use the information you googled combined with going to a store and touching things to see which will work best. Again, Joanns has sales, and I there are always coupons to be found.
Also, remember we can Frankenstein patterns to an extent. Like, if the body of pattern A is great, but the sleeves on pattern B would work better, we can combine them.
Following those instructions, we did this:
google images: anastasia orphan dress
click first picture. yell at stupid website for not letting me open it.
go back, click 3rd picture. scroll down. make note of basic costume elements. (Baggy, puffy sleeves, contrast cuffs and collar, belt, buttons)
Google images: anastasia anya costume
click 10th picture. oogle pretty costume. email deviantartist about possible pattern help.
Google (not images): anastasia anya costume
click first web link (not images link). scroll down to "wardrobe"
document says "wears a ragged yellow tunic under a green overcoat, along with a newsboy cap and purple scarves and gloves"
mkay. they called it a tunic. that's a start. rather than blindly looking at all the patterns on the sites, let's use that.
go to mccall pattern website, search "tunic"
on the right side it'll say 'narrow by brand' just choose one for now, i chose mccalls. (some of the brands are all owned by the same people so it'll try to search all of them, even though we're on the mccall webpage)
scan the images for ones that look kinda right. I choose to focus on them having a collar and buttons on the front. Open them and compare, eliminating ones that aren't right.
I opened ...
M5967 -the tucks on the front would be a pain to remove and still have it look right. nope.
M6167 - a possibility. view D with different sleeves. using only the bottom half of the collar so it doesnt fold over like normal collars, and shifting the buttons. Don't worry about the scrunchy waist, you'll have a belt over it anyway
M6380 (or "Hey! This is the same as the last one!") - its exactly like the last one, but cheaper. I don't understand but whatever.
M5556 - so far the best. it's got the half collar, the buttons, the length, and the sleeves can be made puffier and a cuff added. But this one is Out of Print. (that just means we cant get it on sale at joanns) We'll leave that one open and check ebay/etsy/whatever to see if it's an acceptable price (in my opinion, $5 or less)
Repeat on the Butterick site (search tunic, preference 'butterick')
B5218 - view B, change collar and shirt buttons, add cuff. bonus: shoulders are 'dropped' (seam isnt right up top, but slouched down like Anya's). a possibility
B4856 - collar wrong, doesnt stand up at all. nope.
Simplicity search:
2365 - those darn tucks on the front. next.
2963 - weird front panel. nope
6076 - front slit is too open, its a cut V instead of just one slit.
SO. after all that. We've nixed all the Simplicities. We're left with
M6380/6167, M5556, and B5218
I really liked 5556, it was the first one I looked at and could see Anya's dress, so I'm going to google it.
Both of the others are current patterns, so they'll be on sale at Joanns for either 1.99 or 99cents at some point. At this point it's upto you. Any of them seem like decent patterns, and they'd all be about the same amount of fiddling to get right.
Oh, and I'll keep an eye on my dA account in case that chick with the awesome Anya costume writes back.
Hope this helped, I know its tricky the first few time. We'll let you know how things go when she decides on a pattern and picks out fabric!
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