The flowers for the headpiece were bought from my local fabric store and then jewels were added by me for a little more detail to the headpiece. I trimmed the stems off and glued them to a headband. The horns are made from craft foam. I rolled the foamie, and then cut through them all at once. It creates the same shape at various lengths to create the layered tiers of horns. I sealed them with some modge podge and then painted and sealed them again.

The bodice is made of four layers. The outer layer is a light green satin and an orange home decor suede. It has steel boning throughout to help add some structure and grommeted up the back. The lining is sugar skull fabric as well for fun! The red pieces on the edge of the bodice are craft foam. They were patterned, cut, shaped with a Dremel, heat sealed and shaped, primed, painted, sealed again, and then crystals added to make the details pop more.

The shoulder piece fabric used is a dark green satin. Cut out into a straight line, it was then folded then stitched together. I then used elastic to make it sit properly on my shoulders. The straps are a teal to green custom printed chiffon that I gathered and stitched onto the shoulder piece and then added some small crystals.

The skirt is a hybrid of pattern work. I drafted the skirt tiers, pulling inspiration for the tighter top skirt from an older Vogue pattern. I then patterned out and marked where the crystals would be placed, adding them by hand with jewel adhesive.

Each tier of the skirt was its own challenge:

For the top skirt, I used a synthetic dye in a rolling boil of water to create the very faint gradient. It was then gathered into the small skirt.

For the second tier , I made a simple gathered circle skirt. What made this skirt hard was that all the crystals were all hand placed throughout. I used crystal glue to adhere them to the fabric. This took about six hours to do.

The third skirt was also a simple gathered circle. The fabric is a discontinued orange satin from my local fabric store. I then appliquéd 250 skirts to the skirt out of a light blue satin. Each was cut individually and took about two days to do. The same goes for the light blue part around the edge of the fabric.

Finally, the fourth skirt. I used a deep green suiting fabric. I cut out 20 sets of the shield pieces and then appliquéd them to the edge of the skirting.

In total, including the cape, there are about 1000 pieces of hand-crafted and cut applique.

The cape for Pepita was by far one of the most time consuming parts of this outfit. I started with a simple full circle skirt and then cut the two half skirt pieces into the feather design. Then, I drafted the detailed patterns of the various sized orange pieces. Then I traced them onto the heat and bond, ironed it to the orange fabric. (discontinued orange satin from before), and then attached them to the red lining. Then I stitched them to the outer shell.

Upon completing the outfit, I felt that the blue needed to have some extra detail to it. I spent 5 hours seam ripping the cape apart. Then, finding a green similar to my dress, I recreated the patterns from the first time. Then I started the entire process again. In total, it took 12 hours to complete.