🎂 Birthday 🎲DICE 🎲 Cosplay! Part II: 🍋LEMON GIRL🍋🎂
(Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with SHINee or SM Entertainment in any way. No patterns/fabrics were gifted and all opinions are my own. My need to create SHINee cosplay for my girlies stems solely from my love of the group and each of the members ❤️)
In all my days blogging, I think this is the first time I ever planned a second birthday outfit from the start! You see, Sephira really couldn’t decide between the Weekend Boy outfit and the Lemon Girl outfit! The Lemon Girl is the person Onew is trying to save throughout the video and in the end, Lemon Girl is the one who ends up saving him!!! We all thought it was such a badass, empowering moment in the video and Sephira thought that was just so cool.
Originally- the plan was to make it a reversible outfit with the Weekend Boy look. But, at a certain point, it seemed like I was forcing this idea of making it reversible- at the sake of it being wearable. So, I decided to scrap that idea and just draft a second Lemon Girl dress! It’s a pretty simple dress, since most of the effort went into making Weekend Boy, so there won’t be a lot of talking in this post, but I do somehow have a ton of gorgeous pictures of Sephira in her Lemon Girl outfit! I think she appreciates the Lemon Girl look a lot because it’s less fussy and really breezy to wear.
🍋the dress!
This is such a Tim Gunn, “Make it work” dress.
I wanted something easy, to be honest, because most of what I do is always so challenging! I prefer making things that are challenging; I prefer evolving and learning and growing every day rather than being stagnant. The Weekend Boy look had lots of challenges so I wanted fewer stressors with this look. I used the Adelyn Dress PDF Pattern (in a size 12Y) by Simple Life Pattern Company as a base. The sleeve options are either long or short, and I needed something in between so I drafted a 3/4 sleeve and took them in to be a bit more tapered. I did the higher scoop back because I didn’t want to use any bow back… I like the visual contrast plus, Sephira (well, all of my girls) are not into frilly, foofy super girly stuff.
First time for everything: 😫 The original Lemon Girl dress 1.0😭 melted over a .0001 of a second near a candle I had lit🙁
As I was cutting the circle skirt, I felt it was just sort of dull so I decided to make a top skirt of the same fabric (stretch poly/rayon). For the top, I used a matching yellow sweatshirt fleece for the top so that the dress had more structure, but the original dress had the poly/rayon as the main fabric (not the sweatshirt fleece). Everything went quickly and smoothly as I started sewing: it was early in the morning and Sephira was sleeping so I couldn’t fit it on her as I went along, but that was ok because I had her up-to-date measurements nearby. As I was finishing it up, I checked the amount of ease and I felt it was too much. I wanted it to fit really well so any bagginess was out of the question. My remedy for this was to add a casing to the inside of the waistline to add a little elastic so it hugged her waist a little better. As I was finishing stitching the casing, I ran out of bobbin thread🙄.
In my haste, I forgot I had lit a candle (because my sewing room roommate, Richard the bunny, had just made a really stinky deposit in his litter box), which I thought was in a safe distance from my working space. Well, it wasn’t. I draped the dress where the candle was for a fraction of a second and immediately the skirt melted as I picked it up hurriedly off the flame. I got blisters over how quickly I took it off because I thought I could stop it from spreading if I put it out as soon as I could. Adorable people that they are, Sephira tried it on anyways and said she loved it, honestly it fit pretty perfectly without the elastic (much to my chagrin). Then, Jon chimed in that you couldn’t see it since it was in the back. Of course, that wasn’t going to work for me.
I went to Joann’s and tried to find fabrics that could work (which felt futile since I’d gotten it all online). I ended up getting a yard of jetset poly and a yard of cotton blend broadcloth (… I loathed having to succumb to broadcloth because I reeeeeeally didn’t want to have to deal with wrinkles). We also had planned to go the waterfalls for a hike later that day and I took the drive there and back to rip out all the stitches and serger stitches (dammit all if I’m not thorough🥲) from the skirts from the bodice which was, thankfully, unscathed. It was less painful doing such an inane chore during a car ride than it would have been just doing it at home and by the time we got home after the hike, it was detached!
I cut the new fabric with the broadcloth on the bottom because it holds a shape better than the jetset fabric, and I turned the sweatshirt fleece to the right side of the garment instead. I realized too late that I should have gotten 1 1/4 yards of broadcloth. The length I got was about 1” less than it should be🤦🏻♀️. To make up for it, I cut 2” bias strips and joined them together, then fold the strip in half lengthwise and just attached it to the bottom. It looks like it was just hemmed, but you and I know this little secret🤫.
If you look at that dress wrong, it wrinkles🥲. But, I starched and pressed the crap out of it so it behaved pretty well for the photoshoot. I wished the yellows were more perfect together, that being said, I love it… I love it on her so. much!
🍋the accessories!
The things that make this outfit come to life are the little finishing touches.
I made a long pair of gusseted gloves, just like the Lemon Girl did in the video. Sewing gloves is such a tedious endeavor. I made these before I made the white gloves for the Weekend Boy look and man, was it arduous! Paired with the dress, it looks so good!
The belt I made from yellow ripstop. I cut it into 1” strips and sewed it using a gathering foot and high thread tension and long stitch length and ruffled it to about a yard. I tested the length tied on her and i marked where I liked the ties to stop and went back and reinforced the area 1mm or 2 above where I was going to cut.
The earrings were made from a pair of earrings that Sephira was never going to wear on their own (I got her permission) and intentionally leftover ruffle from the belt. I found this adorable string of lemon beads at Joann’s and I split them up between the two earrings and used beading elastic and two 5 loop end bar to attach them to the base earrings. She absolutely 💕 them!
🍋the photoshoot!
I already talked a lot about the locations for the photoshoots in the Weekend Boy pictures. The first place we went to was “shawol house” and it made the most incredible backdrop with that yellow dress! Oh! It was such a pleasure editing her photos!
The next day when we took pictures near home, Jon came with us as my assistant, so to speak. He’s really good and making the kids laugh and giving them pose ideas (sometimes great, sometimes really cheesy😂). They had a lot of fun being goofballs and sneaking up on each other!
We got these really gorgeous shots of the sunset leaking through over the trees and I got these pink and rainbow lens flares that were just breathtaking!
So that’s it!! It took some twists and turns but Sephira’s happy so I’m happy!! I hope you enjoyed hearing about the whole process! Thank you so much for following us through our whole journey!
hugs + stitches,
kat
YAY! You're here! I'm so happy! I'm Kat! Mom, shawol, and pattern designer, this is the place where I share all of my sewing projects, chibi cosplay fashion, and DIY/tutorials! Everything around here is action-packed with color, silliness, and tons of kawaii stuff!