making your own Zelda dress

[Lulu]

After a friend of mine told me all about the “Elf Fantasy Fair” (a fantasy event in the Netherlands) I really wanted to go. And of course I wanted to go as Zelda. I decided to make the TP version. Not the easiest costume to make though. I took me loads of time to make the costume. I want to show you some of the pictures of the costume. On these pictures the parts of the dress are not yet finished, except for the last one.

I will put more pictures online soon, and hope to make some sort of “Making Of” which may help you to make your own Zelda dress.

Armor part


Crown


Glove


Ears


Dress


dress detail

[ZeldaMaster#1#1]

Wow.

That looks like Nintendo scanned it out of the TP game.

Anyways, I don't have resources, so all I can do is admire these fan-made costumes.

[Iroas]

You're alive! :D

We did a colab once <.<;


Haven't seen your stuff in a while! Last time though you're stuff was digital drawings of link with new armor and stuff like that.

This is really cool stuff. You're multi-talented AND you look like Zelda too ^^ More pictures please :p

[Lulu]

Hey Thanks!
Yes I'm still alive Iroas I remember you, I once coloured one of your drawings.
Tomorrow I will post more pictures!

[FinalRound]

Very nice! This looks very authentic!

[Sue-Lyn]

Awww, I wish I could sew...When are you going to put up how to make it!!?!? I want one!!

[Lulu]

I started making a pattern of the dress. I did this with Adobe Illustrator. Though the pattern may look quite nice, it was far from perfect. Luckily I made some parts to big, and not to small. But because of all the errors in de pattern I want to advise you NOT to use it.



When the pattern was done I could make an indication how much fabric there was needed to make the dress. We are talking only about the white parts of the dress here, the dress and the gloves. But what kind of fabric do you want to use? So I started looking on the internet for more information.



I wanted to use fabrics that also did existed in the middle ages.
Cotton was a very expensive fabric in de middle ages, therefor only used by the richer people. I could have used this fabric, but because it is so normal these days it doesn’t have an authentic look.
linen was also used in de middle ages, but mostly worn by the normal people. Not something a princess would wear.
Velvet is a very expensive fabric and also excised in de middle ages, the same goes for silk.
Satin is a very modern fabric and didn’t exist in de middle ages.

So silk and Velvet remain. I chose for Velvet, but that is my personal taste. Be careful with velvet though! When you cut the fabric make sure the hairs of the fabric all stand in the same way. If you don’t do this it’s almost impossible to sew the parts together. And if you use an other color than white you will see a color difference between the parts.



The dress was sewed together. But there still was a lot to do. On the bottom of the dress there are a couple of ornaments. After looking at the official art picture of Nintendo for a while I found out how the ornament was looking exactly. The end result you can see below.



I embroidered al the ornaments by hand. One Ornament took 6 hours to make. There are 8 on the dress. And than there is of course the brown border on the bottom of the dress. And the white dress is finished

[Sue-Lyn]

Wow, that's really pretty!! What is the armor and crown made out of?

[Lulu]

The armor is made of foam rubber with some wire mesh inside to give it the right shape. I put 2 layers of glue on it so the paint would look nice. But I will put a "how to make" of with photos online soon.

[Sue-Lyn]

looks perfect

[Ryoko]

Very, very pretty. Neat "How to" on the dress. Too bad I know nothing about making costumes or clothes. XD

[Lulu]

thanks . Well Ryoko I didn't know anything about making costumes before I started on this one either. I never made one before. If you truly want you can do the same.

[sapphire_dragon]

That's.... AMAZING! Very nice job on the costume.
You might want to add a little yellow triforce thing on the back of the right hand glove... you know, her triforce. But that's just my opinion.

[Lulu]

Thanks, I thought about the triforce. I just didn't want to make it on the glove, but to do something with light under the glove. I just haven't found the right way and time to get the done. But thanks fot the comment, I love it when people think with me, an try to make things better.

[CourageWielder]

Originally Posted by Lulu

Thanks, I thought about the triforce. I just didn't want to make it on the glove, but to do something with light under the glove. I just haven't found the right way and time to get the done. But thanks fot the comment, I love it when people think with me, an try to make things better.

Hm, how about trying to make small LED's fit on your hand, or use fiber optics with them to poke under the glove just a bit? I believe you can use LED's with batteries.

[Margar]

yeah you can use tiny led's inside a triforce-shaped container (plastic) and use a flat watch battery. You can go to an electronics store and talk to people baout how to go about it.

you could also do glow in the dark... but it'd only show up in the dark :/

[sugarpoultry]

Wow, you used the same exact steps I did for my Zelda costume! Awesome! Course, you did a lot of stuff better than I did.

This is mine.