Completed For: Baycon 2002
Worn At: Baycon 2002
Awards Won: Best Craftsmanship (Group), Best in Show, Baycon 2002

Why I Chose This Costume:
How could I not? Jane was the Disney character I identified with most, who cares if everyone mistook me for Belle??

How I Made this Costume:
The bodice was a simple adapted bodice pattern, but the stylized leg of mutton were rather tricky. The time consuming part, was, of course, the skirt. It was a circle skirt comprised of the outer layer, and an inner layer of tougher tafetta. Having the two layers let me construct the skirt without ugly stitching lines for the ruffles. The bustle drape had to be designed so I could still flip the skirt up, so rather than using an actual bustle, I created a bustle pad out of ruffled net that was sew into the waistband with the remainder of the fabric.

My Thoughts on this Costume:
This was a lot of fun to perform in, and a lot of people enjoyed our twisted sense of humor.
Disney lawyers, please don't sue us!!!!

One thing I hated on some cancan skirts was, when the dancer would lift up the skirt, the front ruffles would flop over themselves, exposing the underskirt underneath. Also, since I had a print, I was worried that when I flipped my skirts, the audience would be treated to the wrong side of the print. My solution was layers! There are six rows of ruffles on the skirt, and each row was comprised of three layers of ruffles. The first is a 4 1/4 inch row of animal print facing the audience, then a 5 1/4 row of tafetta for body and contrasting color, and the another 4 1/4 row of animal print facing inward, toward the skirt. This was so, when I lifted my skirt, and the rows in the front flopped over, the audience would still see the animal prints, just this time on the ruffles that were sewing facing the skirt!

More about the the Disney/Moulin Rouge Diamond Dogs skit:
The day we saw Moulin Rouge for the first time, we KNEW we had to make costumes from the movie. The following weekend, we went fabric shopping with our friend, Cordelia, to start work on costumes (we were that excited about them!). After way too much soda, we came up with our most twisted idea to date: the Disney Heroines as if they were dancers in the Moulin Rouge.
We knew we had to get as many like minded people in on this as possible.After much negotiation, we had:
Jasmine (Aladdin): Rhonda
Alice (Alice): Kelly
Aurora (Sleeping Beauty): Cordelia
Jane (Tarzan): Judy
Cinderella (Cinderella): Kel

We decided that while each character would have the outside of their costume reasonably close to the Disney designs (except executed in cheap satins), we wanted to have a lot of fun with the interior of the costume. Each "princess" had her ruffles and bloomers themed to the character. Cinderella's design was "midnight" with prints of stars and clocks, Sleeping Beauty had the Dragon, with evil eyes on her undies, and flames on her hose and skirt. Jane had animal prints, Jasmine was the magic carpet, and Alice had the Cheshire Cat (including the grinning face on the back of her bloomers!)

After batting around skit concepts for a while, we decided to go with "shock the audience." We combined music themes from Disney with racier music of Moulin Rouge. Basically, the five princesses twirled on to the stage, clutching a heart with the name of her prince, to the strains of "Someday My Prince Will Come" from Snow White. Gradually, each princess came to the realization, that well, waiting is boring! A loud record scratch was heard, we tore up our hearts, flipped our skirts to show the back of bloomers, and sashayed out to "Meet Me in the Red Room" from the Moulin Rouge Soundtrack.

After some gymnastics (i.e. cartwheels) from Jasmine and Aurora, our soundtrack loudly announced, "EVERYBODY CAN-CAN" and the non-dancers attempted a few high kicks to Fatboy Slim's "Because We Can". Doing the can-can in a thirty pound skirt and a corset is rather difficult, we've discovered! Regardless, it was a lot of fun, and most people seemed to enjoy our twisted sense of humor.