Inspiration:

I have been looking forward to the first movie installment in The Chronicles of Narnia for years. Ever since December 2003, I haunted Narniaweb.com almost daily, looking for the latest news. My Dad first read the Chronicles to me and my younger siblings when I was about 8 or 9, and we instantly fell in love with them. I remember playing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with my younger sister Rebekah, and close cousins. Cousins Josh and Jon were Peter and Edmund, Rebekah was Lucy, and I was Susan. I've always loved Susan. I could easily relate to her bossy and practical personality (being the oldest in my family) and I would always pretend that I was her. So when I heard that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was being made into a movie, what was more logical than for me to make a "Susan" dress?

Slowly but surely, images began to be released, and I instantly fell in love with the archery dress. I loved its elegance and simplicity. It was beautiful enough to be worn to a medieval festival, and yet simple enough to put on and run around in the woods in without worrying about ruining it.

I was not able to go see The Lord of the Rings in the theaters and felt very left out (*grin*) as I looked at all of the great costumers online who made outfits and wore them to the movie. So to make up for that I decided to make Susan's archery dress and wear it to the theater.

This is the first "official" image that was released of the dress. It was unfortunately, very deceiving. You can not clearly see that there are more than three sleeve slashes and the second belt buckle appears to have been photoshopped in.
Next are two screencaps from the teaser trailer. The first one doesn't reveal very much, but you can clearly see that the sleeves flair ever so slightly at the wrist. In the second shot you see the arm slashes better and get a clear view of the lacing on the back.

The first picture is from the full length trailer. You can see the wrist flare and the lining on the inside of the sleeves. Second is a full length shot which helped my figure out how long the dress is.
Third is a shot that persuaded me that there were 5 sleeve slashes (first I thought there were 3, as that's all you can see at once. Then I thought there were four; and then I figured there were 5 because the middle slash was centered on the middle of the sleeve). In that pic you can see the bottom two slashes and the sleeve seam.
Lastly is a shot from the super trailer which shows some of the sleeve embroidery and also how the bottom of the sleeve curves down.

Here are some of the higher resolution photos that were released later. In the first two you can see the shape of the bottom of the sleeve and a good bit of the sleeve embroidery. In the last you can see a tiny bit of the neck embroidery as well as the neckline V and lacing.

Here are some great images I got of the Narniaweb Costume Forum (I hope people don't mind me using them!). Some of these I wasn't able to see until after I finished my dress, but they were still great to look at. The first picture shows the length and fullness of the dress really well. Picture two is great for the slashes and picture three is one of the few good shots of the back. The lacing at the top looks nearly exactly like Lucy's. And the last picture shows the neckline embroidery and slashes really well.

• For lots more awesome and high res images, visit The Wardrobe Door. Click here to go straight to the archery dress page. Five Star site!
  
• For tons of info and news (including images) on the new movie and the upcoming sequels, visit the ultimate Narnia movie site, Narniaweb.com.
  
• Another great resource is the Narniaweb Costume Forum. Here is a direct link to the awesome archery dress thread. This was really helpful when I was making the dress.
  
• I also started my own thread on the Sensibility forum. I really enjoyed discussing this dress with the other girls on the board.
  
• And, of course, I have to post the official movie site, Narnia.com.

If you are interested in making the dress I suggest you check out all those links, they were very helpful.

Materials:

McCALL'S patterns 4491 (for the main dress) and 4490 (for the sleeves), 7 yards of dark green cotton fabric, 7 yards of a cotton/polyester blend for lining, 2 yards of cording for back lacing, 1/2 a yard of suede lacing for neckline lacing, eyes (as in hook and eyes) for back lacing, buttons for underdress closure.

Construction:

This dress was a real job! I did tons of research while making this gown. I studied every picture I could get my hands on, followed two forum threads on the dress, listened to tons of other girl's suggestions, and experimented galore. I have never felt so proud of any costume I completed!

I made a mock up out of muslin first. The main dress went together very well, but required some minor fitting, as the bust was full in a weird place and stuck out dreadfully. I also altered the neckline, making a facing to create a nice edge and a clean cut V in the front. I tested out numerous decorative stitch combos on my Platinum 770 until I finally came up with one I liked.

The sleeve was a whole different matter. My first one was way too tight (and I have really thin arms!) and extremely restricting. I made the sleeve width the biggest size and tried another sleeve. It was still too tight across the shoulders and I could hardly lift my arms. Then I drew the top line of the sleeve higher on the sides. This gave me more fabric under the arms and solved my problem, making the sleeves very comfortable.

I made the slashes the way Philo of Narniaweb and Sensibility suggested:
If I were to do them, I would probably make an individual "facing" for each slit. I haven't searched the internet for good instructions on this, but here's my own try: Cut a facing for each slit, a rectangle a couple inches bigger than the finished elipse. Mark the elipse on the wrong side of facing fabric, then with right sides together, sew the sleeve and facing together along the markings. You'll probably want to reinforce the top and bottom by going over the stitching. Cut out the center elipse, trimming close at the corners. Then turn the facing through the whole to the inside of the sleeve. Secure as necessary (topstitch if desired).
I followed her instructions nearly exactly and my slashes came out better than I originally dreamed they would. Thanks so much, Philo!!!

The last thing I did on the sleeves was draw the bottom edge so that it curved down from the wrist over the top of my hand. I also added a little width at the bottom sides, to create the slight flare that is obvious in so many pictures.

So, on December 9th, to celebrate the opening of the movie, I cut out my entire dress. As you can guess, I didn't finish it in time to see the movie in, but that's OK- I'm still happy! :) I'll just say here, be careful when you cut the dress out! It's really confusing and easy to mess up the pieces and not fit them all on your fabric - unless you follow the cutting guide on page one of your pattern instructions.

The dress went together well. I attached the body of the dress and the lining together at the armholes and hem and when I sewed the sleeves on, I left the lining free and slipstiched that in by hand. Thus, the whole inside of the dress is lined and has a very clean finish.

I used my Platinum 770 to do the "embroidery" and it came out very nice. I stitched the eyelets at the front neckline by hand and cut two short pieces of the suede lacing, put them through the holes and stitched those in by hand. To get the underdress to show around the neckline, I did only a 1/4" seam allowance around the underdress neckline, instead of the 5/8" on the dress neckline; therefore, I have about 3/8" of the underdress showing and I really like how it looks.

The back of the underdress I fastened with loops and buttons. I sewed the buttons on the inside of the dress, so you only see the edges of the dress line up on the outside. Then I fitted the overdress to my dressform (this was before the two dress bodies were attached at the armholes) and made the top edges 1 1/2" away from each other, gradually tapering down to a point. Then I folded the edges under and made a nice little seam along the edge (Oh! BTW, I made the bottom of the back opening two inches higher than on the pattern, as I wanted it to come down to where the belt would run so that you wouldn't see the bottom of the opening.

Next, I made a placket of the dress fabric to fill in the back opening and hand-stitched that to one side of the opening. I put snaps on the other side of the opening and placket to anchor it securely. Then I got some big eyes (you know, hook and eyes. I think mine were size 3) and sewed 10 (I think) on either side of the opening. When I put the dress on, one of my younger sisters would first button up the underdress, and then snap the placket together across the back. Lastly, she would lace the dress all the way down. As I didn't like the way it looked tied down at the end of the opening, I put another eye at the bottom of the opening on the inside of the dress. My sister would just pull the laces securely through that eye and tuck them down inside the dress. I might add that it does take a few minutes to get the dress on completely.

Well, I think that's pretty much all I can think of about making the dress. I am very happy with the way everything turned out! I was so afraid that there would be something "not-quite-right" with the dress, but it's absolutely perfect! I wasn't able to finished the belt as my machine is having some problems with the faux leather (It must be my fault - I can't believe that a $1500 machine doesn't know what it's doing!). It was a lot of work, but SO worth it!!!

The Finished Gown:

We'd had a good four inches of snow the night before Lydia and I took these pictures and woods behind our house were just beautiful! It was the perfect setting for a Narnian photo shoot! Sorry about the graininess - we had the camera on a bad setting - oops! :) I'll be taking more (better) pictures when I finish the belt.

Oh, and I was just being silly in the 6th picture - I just posted it because you can see how the slashes look when my arms are up, and you can also see how full the skirt is, as well as a bit of the side seams. And excuse the snow in my hair in that last picture - I pushed too hard against a tree and started an avalanche! :)