My son wants to be Merida from the Disney/Pixar movie Brave for Halloween 2015.

He wasn’t pleased with the selection of Merida dresses out there - they looked way too froofy and girly compared to the plain dresses that Merida actually wore in the movie. My son wanted to look like the Merida he knows from the movie, not the over-princessed version of the dress-up costumes Disney sells, so I started crocheting.

The Wig
I have a separate project page for the wig, including all of the details on how I made it HERE.

To Make the Dress
This dress was improvised from a basic dress top I used for my toddler daughter, just obviously made bigger for a 4-year-old. Once I got through the shoulders and chest area, I just kept going straight down until I hit my son’s waist. Then I started doing a few increase rows - small increases at first, and then a bit more as the length grew. I would try it on him every 10-20 rows or so to make sure the shaping was coming out right, and frog back a few rows and fix as needed until I got the increases to make the dress lay the way that I wanted, and to achieve the desired shape. We modeled the dress after the main one Merida wears in the movie - dark green and plain with long sleeves.

Once the shaping and length were finished, I went back and re-attached yarn and did the sleeves. The armhole openings were 30 stitches around and approximately 20 rounds in length each. I did two decrease rounds after the first 10 rounds.

The entire dress is made from HDC stitches.

Sewing on the Finishing Touches
After crocheting both long sleeves, it was time to bust out the sewing machine. I picked up some pre-ruffled trim (sold by the yard) in a pale gold color and sewed in trim around the openings at the neck and wrists.

Then I used a little rectangle of fabric in a similar color to make puffy “elbow pads” on the arms. This rectangle of fabric that I sewed around the arm was lightly stuffed, and then I crocheted four “bars” per arm and attached them perpendicularly across the fabric rectangle. The bars are 20 ch long and 1 HDC wide. (I hope this makes sense.)

The triangle of fabric at the center front of the dress at the neckline was formed from a piece of the ruffled trim folded into a triangle and sewed into place. I used green thread after to add a decorative criss-cross to the triangle to mimic green lacing across the neckline like Merida has on her dress.