DIY Ewok Village Princess Leia Costume

My Princess Leia costume was pretty simple, which was good since I left it till last and was finishing it up the afternoon of our ward Halloween party. As you see in the picture above, the costume consisted of 4 parts: the hair braid, the dress, the shoes, and Ocean's Ewok costume.

1. The Hair Braid

I lucked out with the yarn I used- it's a brown yarn with little lighter flecks in it and it almost exactly matched my hair. I made a long braid and held it on my head to see how it looked. I used way too much yarn the first two times and had to keep decreasing the amount of yarn in the braid. Once I liked how it looked I wrapped some leather lace (purchased at Michaels) in a criss-cross pattern around the braid.  

When it came time to wear it, I bobby pinned it in with several bobby pins. It stayed in place quite well. 

Here's the braid by itself. 

The only thing I should have done differently was to leave the ends of the braids longer and more uneven. Giving them a blunt cut made them look a lot less natural.

2. The Dress

I used a cream microsuede fabric for the dress, but a light tan would have been better. I used a shirt and skirt to make a basic pattern for the dress. To give the skirt more fullness and uneven edges I added triangular panels to the sides and front of the dress. The points of the triangles were at about arm pit level and I cut the bottom hems at an angle to give them the right look. I made a matching sash, but you can't see it very well since I'm carrying Ocean.

 When I made the sleeves of the dress I sewed in some white fabric (leftover from Sunshine's Princess Leia dress three years ago) to make the long sleeves.

I used my crop-o-dile to put some eyelets in the front neckline. I threaded some of the leather lace I used on the braid through the eyelets. No one ever saw this part since I always had Ocean strapped to me. But I knew it was there :)

 The white sleeves are sewn in at the shoulders. 

I made a simple cuff for each sleeve and then put two eyelets in each and threaded a bit more of the leather lace through them.

3. Strappy Sandals

I wore some Dansko sandals I've had for years, but any strappy sandals you have will work.

4. Optional Ewok Friend

You can find my post about Ocean's Ewok baby carrier costume here. If you have an older child who can walk, a walking Ewok would be a great addition to this costume.

This was a fairly easy costume that wasn't too complicated and didn't take a ton of time. Getting the sleeves and the varied hemlines right took the longest. I don't know that it was the most flattering outfit I could have worn, but I am still pleased with how it turned out. I especially like the braid. I couldn't afford to buy a hair piece to use and I can't touch fake wigs (been there, tried that, got totally icked out), so finding yarn that matched my hair so closely was exciting.

You can see this year's family of Star Wars characters here
Last year's family of Star Wars characters can be found here