Anna Dresses

Girls Frozen Elsa Anna Dresses Kids Costume Princess

How to sew Elsa and Anna dresses

My Mom and I are both crazy when it comes to making things. We have discussions about authenticity and couture sewing techniques over dresses made for small girls, but we love it. Since Elsa and Anna from Frozen are beloved by my 2 and 3 year old nieces, we decided to create custom Elsa and Anna gowns for them for Christmas. Since it is rather hard to get ahold of these costumes, and I’m assuming others are hoping to make their own Elsa and Anna dresses, I thought a post on our dress construction process would be useful. This post will include tips we learned along the way, as well as some online fabric resources that would have been helpful if we had known about them before starting the process.

Frozen costume pattern choices

The “official” frozen pattern (McCalls M7000) came out right when we started on this project. I would suggest this to the beginning sewer who is creating a costume more for it’s practical use or “necessity” (you can’t find one to purchase).

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My Mom and I wanted to make true princess dresses complete with poofy petticoat lined skirts. We also wanted the dresses to be more authentic than what the pattern above calls for, as well as make dresses that were comfortable and twirl worthy for little girls. We settled on using Simplicity 4764.

Turns out this pattern is discontinued, so we opted for the PDF print out version. That was a rather frustrating process, but it also meant my Mom and I could both print a copy of the pattern for our use (I worked on Elsa, she worked on Anna). We picked this pattern because it does have a petticoat, or layers of netting built into an underskirt. This makes the dress “poof” nicely, and the layer of lining keeps the netting from being itchy. We also liked that there was a distinct point to the bodice, as well as pretty princess seaming. I’m a little surprised this pattern is discontinued since there are so many options and the pattern is well designed.

For the shirt under Anna’s jumpsuit/dress we decided to alter a pajama pattern, McCalls 6458. I realize that my niece Sienna will probably be the only little girl whose Anna dress actually has a separate shirt, but in the name of authenticity, that’s what we decided to do. If you do the same, note that my Mom opted to use a smaller size (due to the loose sizing on pajamas) and she also nipped the waist in the torso section a bit and made a mandarin collar. If I lost you at mandarin collar, you might just want to find a blue shirt.

Making Anna

My Mom was tasked at making Anna, and had glitches from day one. I actually finished a lot of the Elsa while she entertained my two little boys, so Anna was completed second, just in time for the sewing machine to break. Catastrophically break. Poor Mom. Thankfully, we were able to borrow an even older sewing machine, a Singer circa 1960 from my Grandma (my Mom’s Mom).