The Original Design of Cancan Leeloo

Found amid the wreckage that is my craft room (affectionately dubbed the “Crap Room” by my husband–and rightfully so. The room is always a pig sty because ‘creative messiness is better than tidy idleness’.) is the original design for my Cancan Leeloo costume as drawn by Shawn Crosby.

As soon as it came out of the printer, we decided that the black ruffle hanging out of the bottom had to go. Other than that, the stylized elements we’d talked about worked great. In the movie, Leeloo’s wearing a shirt and baring her midriff. With my corset, that wasn’t possible, so we figured we’d try the opposite–bare my shoulders as much as possible and hide my midriff (and corset).

In the drawing, the skirt’s a little long, too. Oops. The pattern we had for it was the correct length. If it was too long, I wouldn’t be able to easily lean over and grab it to hold it up…well…as easy as it can be while wearing in a corset!

From here, I considered fabrics and colors. The shirt was going to be white. the suspenders, wrist bands and skirt accents were to be orange vinyl. The skirt itself needed to be more of a champagne than yellow. I was on my own for the bloomers and stockings underneath. I chose more orange satin and some black and white fun stuff for trim.

The stockings…well…I’d never done anything like those before. I knew I needed something super stretchy. Hmmm…How about this $1/yard stuff I’d gotten 10 yards of ’cause I thought it was kinda neat but was now collecting dust and getting in the way? (I do that a lot…hence one of the many reasons the craft room is the crap room.)

So, that was my game plan. I also had some white, ribbed cotton knit (also purchased in a $1/yard binge and collecting dust while getting the way) to use on the shirt.

But what I needed in order to really do it right was a coverlock machine… Best investment ever in my sewing hobby. Yeah, I was a very happy girl once that thing arrived and after I spent the eon figuring out how to thread it for what I needed it to do.

I think I’ll stop here on this journey and break it up a little. There’s still many more posts to be done from wig to boots on this costume!

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