Disneybound Mulan || Making a 1950s Dapper Day Mulan Inspired Outfit

Hello and welcome to Enchanted Brows Costumes. My name is Marika and today I'm going to be working on a Disney bounding project. When Disney announced that they were going to be doing a live action version of Mulan, I was very very excited. It is one month until Mulan hits theaters and I have decided to make a Disney bounding Mulan dress. The dress that I'm going to be making is inspired by the 1998 Mulan matchmaker outfit. The reason I chose this gown is actually because of Emily Hastie, which you may know as Once Upon a Stitch on Instagram. She created a beautiful set of illustrations based on Disney princesses, so I will link her down below. This is her illustration for her matchmaker Mulan and I absolutely love it, it is beautiful. Now I'm not going to be following this exactly, I'm more using it as a starting point for inspiration for my own frock. The patterns that I'm going to be using are from the Big Four, so the main pattern that I'm using for the dress is Butterick 6018. I'm going to be using View B. For this frock, I'm going to be removing the sleeves and then changing the neckline slightly for what I have in mind. And then instead of having the pink and purple robing bit attached to the dress, I am going to be making a bolero to go over top. So this is Simplicity 8462 and I'm going to be using that. So it will go over top of the gown and it's something that I can actually wear this dress when I'm not Disney bounding and it'll work perfectly. So the fabrics that I've chosen are from Fabricstore.com. I will link them down below and I will list all the titles of what the fabrics are that I'm using. The main fabric that I have for the frock, I bought six yards of this beautiful linen. I believe this is the five ounce linen. It's in the color Purple Wine, so it's not coming up correctly on the camera lighting here. So this is going to be the main material that I'm using for the gown. Now for the bolero, I have, I think this is called Lush Pink. So this beautiful light pink and I bought two yards of this. And then for the kind of decorative area that's going around the neckline, I have this beautiful purple. It is a, I think it's called Royal Purple. So anyways, I am very, very happy with how all these colors look together. I have my fabric and I have my patterns. I need to wash them before I can officially start anything, but I figure I can do a mock up first. So let's get down to business. Before washing my linen, first I serge the raw edges to prevent them from fraying. With my fabric in the wash, I traced out my pattern pieces and began cutting out my mock up. For the skirt portion of the mock up, I decided to only cut to the length of my hip to save on fabric during this process. I made a few changes to the original pattern, but for the most part I stuck to the design. Next I copied my altered pattern to a new paper for a clean pattern. And then it was time to start cutting. I cut the majority of my patterns out single layer to try and prevent cutting off grain. And after cutting out everything, I then transferred all the pattern markings. So the main dress is all cut out. I have everything marked here. I have pockets and then this is the lining for the dress. This is a cotton ball that I have for the lining. So what I'm doing is, this is going to be for the bodice. Just because I want to be able to wear this without the white peeking through. Mulan, she had I guess a white underdress under hers, so that's kind of my reference to that. So yes, I have that under there and then I have, this is going to be for the bodice. And I have all the pieces cut out here. Starting with the bodice, I began by pinning all the darts. Including the lining, there are a grand total of 12 darts in the pattern. After stitching them all, I then pressed them to the left or right according to the instructions. I find pressing the darts over a hem gives me the nicest finish as it's being set into its final shape. With the darts finished, I started sewing the bodice pieces together. First with the center front seam and then the shoulder seams. Instead of sewing up the side seams next, I opted to finish the neck and armscye first. I pinned the fashion layer to the lining around the neck and then stitched it in place. The neckline of the bodice is done. I've edge stitched in here. The sides of the bodice are still open, so that is the front with the lining, and the back with the lining, and the edge is still open here. To finish off these edges nicely now, what you want to do is open up the bodice, let's see, this is the side we're going to be closing, so you go like this, and roll it up, and then you wrap this around here, like that, so keeping that all tightly rolled, you just pin around the edges. Okay, so, that is all pinned up, and now I'm going to sew it. After sewing, I clipped and graded the seam allowance to reduce the bulk in the shoulder strap, and then carefully turned the bodice right side out, and repeated the steps on the other side. And then I sewed up the side seams, gave everything a good press, and set it aside to work on the skirt. The skirt was fairly simple to put together. I simply lined up the notches, and sewed everything together. Originally, I was going to sew them up with French seams, but I decided to use a turn and stitch finish, as it would be easier to alter it in the future. If you want to see more seam finishes without a serger, I definitely recommend you check out the video that I've linked below. Next I stitched up the skirt lining. Now I did end up using French seams on these, as the voile did not like the turn and stitch method. With the wrong sides of the fabric together, I pinned the lining to the linen layer and basted along the waist seam. And then I joined the skirt and bodice together, making sure to leave the bodice lining free so I could hide the raw edges. Next I installed the lap zipper, and then hand stitched the bodice lining in place. Before hemming, I did hang the dress for a few days to let the bias do its thing. I then leveled the bottom of the skirt and finished it off with a double turn hem. So I finished my dress last night, and then this morning I woke up to the news that Moulin has been postponed. I kind of knew it was going to happen, it just sucks, because I don't want to believe that's happening, but just, I guess with everything that's going on right now, they decided to postpone. So they don't have a new date yet for the release. So I've decided to kind of put this project on hold for the moment. I'll probably pick it up next month or the month after when I'm feeling a little more inspired again, but right now I'm just going to work on something else, just because. I actually only took a month off from this project before I decided it was time to finish it. The inspiration to finish it came after I found a garden of cherry blossom trees and decided that I needed to take photos there, but first I had to conquer a few obstacles. This bolero jacket is a mess. There's four and a half inches of ease in this pattern, just for the back panel. Seriously, this pattern is driving me crazy! Why do they have to have nine inches of ease in a pattern? Please, please someone tell me why. Who thought that would be a good idea? So I'm at the paper stage still. I've traced it out in the size that I said I should be in the pattern. There was no measurements on this pattern, which is kind of bugging me, because usually they come with the finished measurements once you've sewn it up. You can see just how much room is in here. My shoulder ends here, so that's a good two inches there. I don't know, this pattern is really messed up. So I'm going to play around with this for a bit and see if I can somehow fix this. I'm feeling like maybe it'd just be easier to drape my own, but we'll see. I want to see if I can try and fix this pattern. So wish me luck. After spending several more hours making mockups and altering the pattern, I finally got it to a place that I was okay with. I zero out of ten do not recommend this bolero pattern. Thankfully it was only a few pieces that I had to cut out, and before I knew it I was done everything. Before adding the interfacing to the lapel pieces, I always make sure the material is in the same shape as the pattern paper to avoid complications further down the line. Also I try to always use a pressing cloth to avoid the chance of getting interfacing glue on my iron, because that is such a pain to get off. And after everything had cooled, I trimmed off any overhang. Next I pinned and stitched all the darts. And just like the dress bodice, I pressed everything to the left or right according to the directions. And then I followed the pattern instructions to put the bolero together. I think the collar portion of the bolero was most challenging for me to sew, as I forgot to true up the seams during my alterations, but it came out alright in the end. Moving on to the sleeves, I sewed up the seams, and then gave everything a nice press. Next I eased the head of the sleeve over my ham, and then steamed it until I achieved my desired shape. I lined up my notches, and then pinned and stitched my sleeve in place. Setting the fashion layer aside, I then repeated these steps with the lining and contrast lapel. And then I stitched the fashion layer and lining together with the bagging out method. And finally I finished the bolero by hemming the sleeves. For the belt of this bounding project, I actually googled wrap belt pattern and used the first free pattern that showed up. The belt consists of one layer of fashion fabric and two layers of cotton. Because my satin is quite thin, I decided to flat line it with cotton. The construction of the belt is fairly simple, and it took me less than an hour to make, but unfortunately I didn't capture the entire process. And just like that, Mulan is done. I am really happy with how this project turned out, and I'm even more excited that Mulan is finally being released. Even though it's not coming to theatres, I am still excited to finally watch it. On a more serious note, I would like to address something that is probably going to come up in the comments, and that is the fact that I am bounding someone who is not a part of my culture. I decided to make this project because I absolutely love Mulan and I'm super excited for the film. I really hope that it's evident that I'm not trying to appropriate her, and I just wanted to share my love of the character. I would love to know if you plan on watching the new Mulan, and who your favourite character was from the animated version. Also, I wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who is subscribed to this channel. At the time of filming this, I think I'm about 400 subscribers away from 40,000, which is insane. Like, why do you follow me? So anyways, I just want to say a huge thank you, and you guys are amazing, and I really hope you enjoy the videos that I have coming up this fall. And again, thank you so much for following me. And I think that's everything for today, so I'll see you next time. Bye!