Snow White - The Jacket

Left photo by Donald Manning

There are some costumes that fall into place without you really realising it, and others, like this, you have to plan for. 

I knew I wanted to do Snow White pretty quickly into starting to watch Once Upon A Time. Regina was up on my list, too, but I knew several friends who were also looking at doing that, and a Snow would mean we could run around together. This was by far my favourite outfit of Snow’s. 

Before I go deep into this, I have to say thank you to Fabric & Fiction for her fabulous build blogs on this costume which are a great resource. She’s the one who turned me on to the pleather binding I eventually used for all the edging.

The fabric is the screen accurate fabric which, if you're looking for it, is called Robert Allen’s Diamond Tuft upholstery fabric. I bought it several years ago knowing I wanted to do this costume because someone said it was going out of stock. I haven't searched for it recently, but the above is the correct thing to look for. To my knowledge it came in both an ivory and white, and I personally think the ivory was what the show used, but it didn't appear to exist by the time I was purchasing. So I got what I got and considered myself lucky.


I based the top of the costume on the pattern McCalls M6819. There are some differences. As usual, I had to do a Full Bust Adjustment on the front of the vest, but before I did that, I had to alter the pattern to begin with. The pattern has two pattern pieces per side, both front and back. It's very clear that there are only darts in the original.

It might not be too much of an issue if it was done with other fabric for the front, but if you have the SA then it will be a pain to try to pattern match the diamonds on the two-piece front and back of the bodice. So first, I made a new pattern which was basically putting the original pattern together, taking out the seam allowance. When that was together, I cut in from side seam to create a dart there.

After that I did the FBA and then procrastinated for ages because I was petrified of cutting the proper fabric because I thought I didn't have that much of it (spoiler-alert: I overbought as usual so I was fine). When I finally got around to cutting and sewing in my darts, despite being petrified, they turned out remarkably well. I'm shocked at my own self to be honest.

I went for a shirt + jacket with detached sleeve parts rather than a full jacket that the pattern makes. The pattern has a pieces behind/between the arm bracers and the jacket that make it a full sleeve, but I wanted to be able to take the shirt off and wash it after a long con day and if I built in the shirt fluffiness as the pattern suggests, I wouldn't be able to do that.

I had to do some finagling around the arms eye area, as the upper arm pattern is clearly intended to be a fitted sleeve, and I didn’t want that. I also didn't want it to fit perfectly, as there should be a gap between the two, so resizing of the pattern happened. I also resized the lower arm so it would fit me better.

As well as the arm, I finagled the shape of the bottom tabs a bit to make it lay in the right angles. Nothing drastic, just some shaving along the bottom.

I actually was really happy with how the tabs came out. 

I did them early in the process so I could have them as easy to transport projects to work on the rhinestoning, hence why a number of these photos may seem out of order.

In total I attached 344 rhinestones. I went with 6mm rhinestones I found stupidly cheap. I sewed each one on and man am I glad I did. Every time I brushed into someone or hugged someone, those rhinestones stuck to pretty much every fabric it could. If I hadn't stitched these suckers down, I wouldn't have had any left after the con. 

I had a bit of a conniption over this binding. I had purchased some leather to create the binding. But when I actually looked at the color next to the fabric it was too stark a contrast. Cue me looking for different ivory leather/pleather for 2 years. Long story short, I never found anything that was light enough, wasn’t too yellow, etc etc.

I eventually went with the suggestion by Fabric'n'Fiction of Neotrims pleather binding in off white. It matches the white version of the fabric pretty perfectly. I don't actually like it being this close in color. I'm convinced that what she has doesn't match 100%, but I couldn't find anything that worked in my timeframe. If I find the perfect ivory binding I may still change it.

The binding took a while to put on, but unlike Fabric'n'Fiction I was not about to do it by hand. I found that actually its folded over on both sides, so I took the time to undo one side (which was semi-welded to itself, probably just because of time, and then sewed it down the wrong side, flipped it over, and top-stitched around all the pieces.

I did not try to make it go around the corners, like I would if it had been fabric. Not only would it have been a royal pain, but I don't think that's how they did it in the show.

Figuring out exactly where to attach the arms was a bit tricky. By this time I was pretty over the project. I'd survived the rhinestones intact, but the leather edging had driven me absolutely up the wall. So getting to put a pile of eyelets in what just what I needed. Banging the hammer down aggressively felt really good, but I had to be more careful than I usually am because I was scared I'd hit and break the rhinestones. 

The collar on the pattern is also pretty good for a Regina costume, but way too large for Snow. I originally cut out the correct size, then shaved off nearly 1.5 inches from the top and front edges because it was just too tall and wide. I put it on, didn't like how tall it was, cut off another inch from top and front, and then kept shaving it down until I was running out of time and just had to commit. Its probably still a bit tall for Snow's but I'm very happy that you can see the keyhole shape of hers.

The last part of the jacket for me was the skirt. I attached this to the jacket itself, although I will probably detach it and make it removable so that when I get it dirty I can clean it easily. I was tight on fabric and just used the pattern from the McCalls pattern.

Photos by Dave Moran

At first I was going to line it, but actually that made it a bit too heavy. So I just ripped that out and hemmed it. However, considering how much the skirt flew about in the weather, I may weight it at the bottom later.

Photo by Dave Moran

And that is most of the work on the jacket!

I stressed so much about the pattern matching on this costume (foreshadowing for this summer's project hey!) but in the end I was really happy with how it came out.

Photo by Donald Manning