Making Padmé's Picnic Dress

 

Photo by madcapmags

Padmé's picnic dress was definitely a dream cosplay for me. And surprisingly, I made this cosplay a reality pretty early on in my cosplay career! I took my time on the details of this dress, and I think it really paid off in the end. And when I say I took my time, I mean I worked on this cosplay for over a year and spent just under 300 logged working hours on this dress (and I know there is some working time I did not account for). I am so happy with how everything on this dress turned out. If you are hoping to make this dress one day, here is a walkthrough of what I did with some tips and resources I found along the way that helped me with the creation of my dress.

Resources

First off, I would not have been quite as successful with this dress without all of the amazing cosplayers who have already shared tutorials and their build processes online. I have found the Padmé costuming community to be so helpful and supportive. They even have a Facebook group that was the biggest help to me with getting started and finding lots of resources and references! Check out Queen Padmé Amidala - A Costuming Group on Facebook for an awesome group of Padmé enthusiasts. 


Here is a short list of some of the other blogs, sites, and resources that I found helpful. And lots of these resources have links to EVEN MORE resources!

Fabric Sourcing and the Skirt

The first thing I did when I was planning and shopping for this cosplay was look for the fabric for the main dress. In my research, I came across "crinkle chiffon" as a fabric choice that a lot of cosplayers were using. I knew I wanted the skirt to be SUPER full, so I was going to need a lot of fabric. I was able to find a large bolt of crinkle chiffon from TableClothsFactory that was meant as draping fabric for weddings/events. I was able to buy 20 yards (2 bolts at 10 yards each) for just under $50! Unfortunately, the exact product I purchased is no longer available... I was only able to find the fabric in white, so my plan was to use one bolt as the lining and the other bolt as the outer layer of the dress, which I would dye a golden yellow color. More on that later. 


Unfortunately, one thing that I did not think about was that my fabric had a grain line running down the length of the fabric to make the crinkle, which did result in the fabric having a definite direction. That meant that when it came time to cut out the dress pieces, I had to do a bunch of smaller panels so that the grain line would be running the same direction on the whole skirt. Not too big a deal, but it did result in me having lots of seams. 


I think in the end, I ended up cutting out 16 of these triangular-like panels for the skirt (16 for the lining and 16 for the outer layer). 

Now on to the dyeing... Fabric dyeing is one of my least favorite things. I haven't quite figured out the science on how to get it to work properly! I have learned a lot since then with trial and error, but I was pleased enough with the dye results for my dress. In an ideal world, I would have liked mine to be slightly more on the darker gold side, as mine ended up a little more on the pale gold side in person. But I'm not too mad about it. In the photo below, you can see the fabric grain line that I mentioned previously. 

The progression of dyeing my fabric from white to golden yellow.

Synthetic fabric is more challenging to dye and has to be dyed with hot water. I wanted to use the stovetop method to get the best dye results, but I also didn't want to cut my fabric before dyeing it, and I had way too much to put in a pot on the stove. So I had to settle for the next best method I could think of. I had a really large metal tub that I used as a makeshift pot that we poured boiling water into since it would not fit on the stove. I only dyed one bolt of my fabric (10 yards) and left the other bolt untouched for the lining, which I will get to later.

 

I used Rit Synthetic dye in Sandstone, Daffodil Yellow, and a bit of Chocolate Brown and Apricot Orange. How much? I couldn't tell you 😅 I primarily used Daffodil Yellow and Sandstone. But I just kept adding and mixing until I was finally pleased with the color. I used the Chocolate Brown towards the end of the process when I was trying to darken the color a little more. 

 

I also threw my shawl fabric in the dye bath with the rest of the fabric so that it would be as close as possible in color to the rest of the dress. More on the shawl later. 

For the skirt lining, I ended up cutting out all of the skirt panels before dyeing them. I used the stovetop method, but with a twist. The lining layer of the picnic dress from the movie is a combination of pinks, yellows, and maybe even some blues? You can see what I mean in this reference photo I found on Padawan's Guide. It's a detail that isn't really seen, but the splotchy colors of the underlayer give nice pops of warmth and some variation where it shows through to the outer layer. 

 

I limited my underskirt to pink and yellow using Rit Super Pink and Daffodil Yellow. I tried a method with a spray bottle first, where I laid the skirt pieces out on a tarp in the yard and sprayed all over randomly with the pink and yellow dye in spray bottles, but when I washed the fabric, it didn't hold on to much of the color at all, so I had to completely redo it with a stovetop tie-dye method. I should have known that my first method would not work since the water was not hot and the fabric was synthetic... On the plus side, the under layer held on to just barely enough color in the wash that the skirt panels were no longer bright white, and gave me a muted base color to start with for the tie-dye. 

 

I took some hair ties/rubber bands and tied off random sections all over each skirt panel (also did the same for the lining of the blouse pieces). One color at a time, I heated up the dye on the stove and dunked the tied-off sections into the boiling dye bath. Warning: hair rubber bands will break the second they come in contact with the boiling water. Learned that the hard way, but I was able to maneuver it enough to get it to work. The color did stay this time and gave just enough of the pop of color that I wanted when layered under the outer skirt. 



One of the most time-consuming parts of this cosplay was all the hand embroidery on the skirt. This dress has a random chain stitch embroidered all over the skirt in lines that cross and weave all over the place. The chains sometimes end in an embroidered flower that has 3 seed beads in the middle, and the chains include a little 4-petal flower sequin every so often. I was able to source the flower sequins from another cosplayer on the Queen Amidala Facebook group who was getting rid of her extras, so I don't have any resources for finding those. For my embroidery floss, I bought several different colors to try on some scrap skirt fabric to try to find the color I liked the best that felt the most cohesive with the rest of the colors on my dress. I ended up using DMC #667 and purchased 21 skeins of it. I think I had a couple left over that I did not end up using, but I did use a lot! And with all of that floss, I separated the strands out to make smaller strands of embroidery floss. If I remember correctly, I think the floss was 6 strands, and I split it into 3 sets of 2 strands. 




Fortunately, I inherited a large wooden quilting hoop from my grandmother, which really came in handy for this embroidery. Since the hoop was massive, I didn't have to move it around quite as often and could do longer sections of continuous chain. I didn't have much of a method for how I added the vines and how often I added sequins. I just went with the flow of how I was feeling. 

I can't express enough how large this skirt is. There was SO much fabric. When I added the vine embroidery, I left one seam of the skirt undone so I could move the fabric around better and added embroidery over the final seam once I was mostly done with the embroidery and was ready to sew it all up. I don't have a great photo of just how big this skirt is, so here is the best I have to show how much embroidery was needed. Excuse the blurry photos; these were screenshots from a video. But look how much floor that skirt covers in my living room!!!


A photo by my sister @madcapmags that shows off how big the skirt is flared out around me

Ok, enough about the skirt... On to the blouse!

The Blouse

I used the McCall's Costumes 3797 pattern as a starting point for my blouse, which was another piece of information I found from the online Padmé costuming community. I really only used the pattern for the sleeves. The rest of the blouse, I think I may have used the pattern as a starting point, but kind of made it up some since most of it was going to be covered by the corset anyway. I made the blouse in a way that used a separating zipper in the back to get in and out of it. The sleeves are constructed from the same fabric as the skirt, and I followed the same process for embroidery. 


I won't go into a ton of detail on the sleeve construction since I tried to mostly follow the pattern. But I will say that the pattern called for me to use bias tape on the inside of the sleeves to create channels that encase elastic. This creates the gather on the sleeve on the upper arm. I only had to do one elastic gather on the body of the sleeve because the lower sleeve gathered naturally where it met the sleeve cuff. The sleeve also has elastic sewn into a bias tape casing around the top edge, where the sleeve drapes off the shoulder, and the bias tape continues all the way around the top hem of the blouse. I don't think the movie blouse has sleeve cuffs, and instead, the sleeve is just bunched up under the ribbons that Padmé has wrapped around her wrists. But I liked the look of the cuff, so I decided to keep that element of the pattern for my blouse. I did make my own fabric buttons using a button-making kit with some scraps from the blouse fabric so that they would match.



You can see in the image below just how long the sleeves actually are when I am not wearing them. You need quite a bit of additional length to give room for the sleeve to bunch up in a few places once it's on your body. You can also see that I did not embroider the entire blouse since the body would mostly be covered by the corset. I just embroidered on the sleeves (which I found to be easiest to do before constructing the sleeve layers) and the top edge of the blouse body. 

The Shawl

I was able to find the iconic Better Homes & Gardens curtain from Walmart that I have seen so many Padmé cosplayers use for her shawl. It already has a really nice vine pattern that looks really similar to the one from the movie. 

This is not my image, and I can't remember which source I found the image from. Probably from one of the sites I linked. But this photo was a good reference for the shawl shape/size.

The shawl has a scalloped edge. I used my sewing machine on a tight zig-zag setting to create a satin stitch around the hem of the shawl. I did not cut the shawl into a scalloped edge until after I had already embroidered the edge. Because the shawl is a sheer material, I placed some tear-away stabilizer under the shawl as I embroidered to help it go through my machine and give the stitches more to hold on to. I used a yellow/gold thread for my satin stitch, and when that was done, I covered the stitched scallops with fray check and let that dry before cutting away the excess fabric around the scallops. I then used some acrylic paint to add some green to the scalloped edge. 


To keep everything in place while I wear it, I added on some sew-on snaps to the underside of the shawl and the upper hem of the blouse to keep the shawl sitting where it should. 

The Corset

This was my first time making anything corset-like. I didn't create this as a functional corset, but just to have the look of a corset. I used the Simplicity New Look 6242 pattern as a starting point for my corset, but did make some changes to try and match the shape of the picnic dress corset more. I also made some changes to the placement of some of the panels to match the picnic dress references more. 



I can't remember where I found the fabric for the outer layer of the corset. I just found a satiny yellow/gold that I thought matched the color scheme of the rest of my fabrics. The interlining was made with a heavier canvas/duck cloth, and the lining against my body was from some muslin from my mockup. I used plastic boning to give the corset a little bit more structure. 

I didn't attach the outer layer to the rest of the corset until after I did all of the hand embroidery... the other part of this cosplay that was the most time-consuming.

For the embroidery, I picked out some green, orange, yellow, white, and a metallic gold (all DMC, I believe). I found some free PDF files of the embroidery design online through my research on some of the resources I linked above. I took those files and traced over them in a drawing app on my iPad to make it easier for me to look at. I then printed the design out on printable water-soluble Fabri-Solvy so that I could stick the design right onto my fashion fabric layer of the corset to embroider. I did have to cut the design a little after printing to get the placement right proportionally for my corset. 



I did get worried partway through this process because the adhesive from the Fabri-Solvy started leaving residue on my fabric. I was so worried that it had stained my fabric, but fortunately, when I washed off the paper after I was completely done embroidering, the discoloration from the adhesive washed away too. This was honestly so scary. I had never used this product before, so I was just trusting that it was going to work like it was supposed to. But it was absolutely perfect for this!


 

After getting all the embroidery done, the fabric had a little bit of wrinkling, which was not necessarily intentional but actually kind of worked out great because the one from the movie was made with a crinkle fabric. Not exactly the same, but I was not mad at all about the wrinkling/puckering of my corset. Happy accidents!

Oh, and the roses you see on the corset were actually taken from leftover shawl fabric! So they match the shawl, and I didn't have to hand embroider the roses. 


And apparently, I have no good photos of the back of this cosplay (and don't feel like getting it out to take a picture right now!), so this is as good as I have. I opted for a lace-up back closure. I added grommets and used a ribbon to lace up the corset. 

I added some straps to the corset by making some thin tubes from leftover corset fabric. The corset doesn't need the straps for support, but the reference dress has straps, so straps it shall have! I also repurposed more of the shawl roses here. 


Wig and Headband / Buns

I found this wig on Amazon a long time ago. I liked the curls of this wig, though it does not have a good middle part like Natalie Portman does in the movie with this dress. I might fix that one day, but right now I'm still happy with it. 


I don't think I did the exact same updo that Natalie Portman has in the movie, but I like the way my wig is styled. I split the hair to gather some at the back of the head into a bun. I wrapped that bun in a black hairnet to help keep it neat. I tied some of the remaining hair that was down into a loose ponytail underneath the bun, leaving just a little bit of the bottom-most row of hair down and out of the hair tie. I wrapped the ribbons around the spot where the hair tie was.

I have made two different versions of this headband. The first one was the result of a last-minute con crunch before DragonCon with anything I had at my house. The second version, I feel, looks more accurate, and I like the colors more. Both were made out of ribbons with gold trims and roses from extra shawl fabric. 

Version 1

Version 2


I included a brown felt layer underneath the newest version so that it is more comfortable against my head. On the first version, there was elastic connecting the two sides of the headband in the back, making the headband a full circle. When I wore version 1, I think I usually left it attached to the wig because it was hard to get it in and out of the hair once it was tucked in well to hide the elastic. This also made it a little more difficult to get the wig on and off since the headband was always attached. For Version 2, it is not a full circle. It stops right around where the bin is on the back of the head, so the ends are hidden. I also attached the headband with some sew-on snaps that I attached to the back of the headband and on the wig itself, so all I have to do is match up the snaps to put the headband on each time I wear the wig. 

When I used to wear version 1 of the headband, I would have to bobby pin the gold bun covers in place. For headband version 2, I upgraded the bun covers as well and made it so that the buns snap onto the headband and hang down. I still bobby pin the bun covers down to support the weight more and keep them from flapping around, but the snaps are a big help. 

The bun covers I crocheted from a golden yellow yarn. I found a pattern online from Behind the Seams (blog.tianablanchard.com), but the site must not be up anymore because I cannot get to it at the time of writing this post. But fortunately, I did take a screenshot of the pattern! Here is the pattern that I tried to follow for the bun covers. I added a piece of brown felt on the inside of the bun cover that I stitched into the crochet on the back side. I used that brown felt as the base to sew on the snaps to attach the cover to the wig. If I had sewn the snaps directly onto the crochet, it would have just stretched out. The felt was a more secure base for the snaps to attach to. I still do use a few bobby pins to secure the bottoms of the bun covers to the wig so that they do not move.

posted by Behind the Seams

posted by Behind the Seams

Other Details

I picked out some assorted pastel ribbons to tie around my wrists and hair. I picked out a white, blue, and pink satin ribbon. I cut one of each color ribbon at varying lengths for each arm. I found the center of each ribbon, lined them up, and sewed them all together at the center point. When I am ready to wear them, I safety pin the ribbon bundle near the top of the arm cuff (hidden by the gathered fabric) and begin wrapping the ribbons in a criss-cross style around my arm. I usually have to enlist the help of someone else for this. Once they get to the end of my arm, I just tie them off to keep them in place and untie them at the end of the day when I am ready to take them off. I added fray check to the ends of all ribbons to protect the ends from fraying.

Photo by madcapmags

The brooch was something I actually found years ago at Hobby Lobby. It was supposed to be a dragonfly pendant, but the tail happened to be broken off on this one. It is not the same design, but when I saw it in the store, it reminded me of the brooch for this outfit, so I bought it. I used E6000 and glued a brooch back to the back side of the dragonfly. Once the outfit is all put on, I can just pin the dragonfly brooch onto the shawl/blouse. 

Photo by madcapmags


I have not found a pair of shoes that I like that match the shoes from the movie. But I did find a pair of light pink ballet-style flats from Amazon that I thought matched the color scheme nicely. Though the pink version of this shoe does not seem to be available anymore at the time of writing this post. 



Any questions?

I am sure I forgot to talk about some element of this cosplay, and I will update this post if I think of more info to add. But if you want to make this cosplay and want to ask me any questions or get any tips from my experience, feel free to reach out! I love talking cosplay with other creators. The easiest way to reach me with questions is over on my Instagram since that is where I am most active. 

Thanks for reading! Here are a few of my favorite photos from different shoots/events I have done with this cosplay in its different stages of completion.


Photo by Sean Corbin Media - Fanboy Expo Knoxville 2023

Photo by Amanda Swanson Photography - DragonCon 2023

Photo by madcapmags - ConNooga 2024

Photo by Danny K Captures - C2E2 2024

Photo by madcapmags - Location Shoot

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