Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.... so you can make your running outfit, ho!

I know I haven't written about sewing for a while, but these outfits were so much fun to make and I used actual patterns (with some improvisation) so anyone could make something similar if they wanted. And by anyone, I mean everyone running next year. With these tutorials, you too will learn that you should just buy something else right off the bat and just add crap to it. But, if you are bound and determined to make your own outfit, well, it's your funeral my friend. Here's how you do it.

Of course I will wear my bikini to your funeral. Just because you're dead doesn't mean you're not a slut anymore and deserve to be treated as such.

So just imagine...... it's two weeks until the race and I finally decided to get started on the princess shirts. I had all of the Under Armor material, had hit Joanne's up for every shade of sparkly and/or glittery material in stock, and ran out of excuses to put it off any longer. This was the first time in a while that I've been excited about sewing and as I took out the pink, purple, and blue tulle, I realized just how long it's been since my office has been covered in tiny pieces of sparkly material and enough glitter to stock a kindergarten classroom. The technical term for this look post-project is 'Tinkerbell Explosion'.

And judging by the amount of crap on the floor when I was finished, apparently all of her little friends exploded as well.

I decided to start with my outfit, Rapunzel, since these are new patterns and lets face it, I'd rather screw something up on my outfit instead of someone else's. The Under Armor is a deep purple, so I bought a lighter purple tulle with glittery purple swirls for the overlay part to try to brighten it up a little. The original plan was to make a running version of my princess shirts, with an empire waist and tie-on overlay. 

The sports bra with the organza pinned to it. It's not looking so hot here.

I had made the sports bra part of my shirt about a week prior using a pattern by The Green Pepper (#407) for the Mt. St. Helens Hot Top, but I needed to add on a bottom part to cover the stomach so I didn't look like the whore of Disneylon in this race. And since I didn't really know how I was going to do that yet, I put it off a little longer and went right to the running skirt. 

I got tired of people sticking dollar bills down my skirt during the last run. Okay, not really. It just got annoying when they wanted me to make change.

The pattern I used was by Jalie, #2796 for the Multi-Sport Skort, found on Rockywoodsfabric.com by Helen, my running outfit guru.  I'll do a more step-by-step demo on how to make the skirt in my next post about Sleeping Beauty but I just didn't take that many pictures of Rapunzel in the making.

It was hard to choose from all of the styles since I'm so sporty

Just not in real life!

The pattern is for a running skirt with 2 pockets and built in shorts or hot pants. I initially made the shorts for under the skirt but after wearing them for five minutes, they had to go. They were like reverse Spanx, emphasizing the drumstick shape of my legs and squeezing all the fat out of the bottom of the shorts in a reverse muffin top. But I figured, hey, who cares how they look? They were just going to be under the skirt anyway, right? But after wearing them for about another five minutes, I realized that if I didn't want a serious crotch wedgie for 13 miles, I'd better try something else.

While a serious case of camel toe is always attractive, I decided to choose comfort over style. Just this one time.

So I made the hot pants, which are basically boyshort underwear but without the center seam (Seriously, who wears those? Is there a large group of women who enjoy
camel toe?). Anyway, these hot pants are perfect. They fit like boyshorts but with only one seam and it does not go up the middle.  I am definitely using that pattern to make a bunch of underwear at some undetermined point in the future when I suddenly have lots of free time. Any day now...

I made the skirt all out of the purple Under Armor, which was much easier than I had thought, and took it out for a test run the next morning.

Check out these pockets sucka

We did an 8 mile run and I had my iPhone in one pocket and money and a gel in the other pocket and it worked great. I LOVE this skirt. My running shorts only have a pocket big enough to fit a key, not my 18th century iPhone that's as big as a brick, so it was so nice being able to carry everything without my SPI belt. 

I  went back to my shirt  and decided on adding material to the sports bra to make it an empire waist and not tight but long enough to cover my stomach. I made two fabric strips out of a lilac colored sparkly material and added gold grommets to mimic the lace-up corset look of Rapunzel's dress. I sewed the strips to the shirt edged them with a decorative leaf stitch using gold thread and laced it up with some sparkly pink ribbon. I used elastic lace for the armholes and sewed it right sides together to the outside of the armhole so when it flipped over, it looked like the picture below. I used this for all the shirts and it worked out really well.

Now I just need to get the pits waxed!

So at this point I wanted to try the outfit on and see what it would look like with the overlay.

Purple skirt, purple empire waist top, and nothing to break up all that purple. I looked like the Great Grape Ape. I could have been a double for the grapes in the Fruit of the Loom underwear commercials.  But I figured hey, I just need the overlay to really tie this together. Wrong! Now I just looked like a pregnant Mrs. Great Grape Ape. There was just nothing flattering about this outfit and I didn't know what to do. Unless of course I wanted everyone to ask when my baby was due and then have to explain I wasn't pregnant, just chose to look this way on purpose. Yeah, no.

No, not pregnant, I just purposefully made myself look frumpy!

Onto Plan B

I tried around with a few different looks and what seemed to look best was a more fitted top and move the overlay to the skirt, almost like a tutu. But if we don't want to look just like the other twenty thousand women wearing a tank top and tutu, I had to step up my game. At this point, it's about two in the morning and I am so frustrated and cursing myself for just not buying the damn tutus from the Disney store that I was about ready to give up.

I was coming up blank and decided that I would get out the skirt that I made for the first Disney run to see what worked there and what I was just not getting this time around. I took it down from the closet and admired the stripper-like handiwork from a month ago. I put it on and it hit me- it worked because it was all in one. There was no separate overlay that you had to tie on and deal with. It was simple. And that's what I needed to do with my skirt. Make it all one piece, including the glittery crap.

I liked the bow in the back but I didn't like how open the apron was and it was all just too many pieces. Something had to go.

Oh, so at this point I decided that I needed to make Liz and Jen's outfits to make sure I got them done so I'd come back to mine last. So fast forward to two fricking days before the race and the story picks up again:

Those boob pads were a great idea!

I cut off the bottom part of the shirt because I was too lazy to rip the seam out, took it in down the sides to make it more snug but not super tight, and sewed it back on. I had made the top portion, the sports bra part, two layers so that I didn't have to wear a separate sports bra under my shirt. Unfortunately, it did not make it look like I had boobs. Shrimp suggested that I add boob pads but when the purple material gets wet, it looks wet. Which means the sweat would be trapped in the boob pads on the day of the race, soaking through the top, and making it look like I'm lactating. Attractive, but maybe I'll pass.

The overlay with 2 layers of tulle underneath

The overlay for the skirt was pretty easy for my outfit. I didn't have it open in the front like Rapunzel's dress since I didn't want it flapping in the wind, so I just used gold rick-rack on the front to mimic the look and also sewed it along the bottom of the overlay. I made two layers of tulle to go underneath and loosely sewed all 3 layers together. Then I sewed these layers to the skirt and lastly sewed all of this to the waistband, stretching as I sewed and using the stretch stitch on my machine.

Everthing finally sewed together- hotpants, skirt, tulle, overlay, and waistband. Then I added the white lace to the top.

Boom, done. Oh, wait, look at that! I am a moron and somehow made it two inches too short, despite the fact that I have indeed used a tape measure before! That figures. I wait till the last minute to make my own outfit and manage to screw it up.

Okay, brainstorm: I'll go to Jo-Ann's and buy some lace to add to the bottom and it'll look like the pettiskirt. This actually ended up looking great- I bought a two-tiered sparkly white lace that was about 2 inches long- except I was about 3 inches short on the lace by the time I went all the way around the skirt. Are you f'ing KIDDING me? Seriously?? I ended up just gathering the skirt a little more to make the lace work and it looked fine, but please, take it from me, MEASURE first! Even if you think you're a sewing genius like me, you're not! Measure, dammit, measure!

With the white lace at the bottom, a small amount added to the neckline, and ribbon sleeves added to the top. Ready to run!

In case you somehow avoided the five thousand times I've posted this picture, here it is again! The four of us during the race!

And at Magic Kingdom- five miles in and and nothing has fallen off- yet!

The hardest part with making the skirt- and all the skirts- was sewing together the hot pants, skirt, 2 layers of tulle, and organza overlay. And then sewing all of that to the waistband is fun too but it's so worth it in the end. After I had all of my layers sewed together, I had some extra white lace that I had used to edge the neckline of the shirt so I sewed it to the top of the skirt where the waistband met the organza. I absolutely LOVE my outfit. But I loved all of the outfits. Every time I finished a piece of any of the outfits, I wanted to keep it for myself, I just fell in love with them all. And I am really excited to make my evil Alice costume for the Tower of Terror run. Now the question is, who's going to be my Queen of Hearts???

I am totally doing this- with a cut throat though and more blood! Do you think I can get extra long compression socks?

Queen of Hearts- how cool is this outfit? And I'm pretty sure we can make a running version for way less than the $160 they're asking for the polyester version, although it is super adorable. Loving the hat! I can't wait for the run!