How To: Ariana Grande's Grammy Dress!

Hello!~ If you are here reading this, chances are that you are interested in making and customizing your very own Ariana Grande Dress. This is not an original idea, and has been done before ( I used a few tricks I learned from them), but not in detail. I will admit the fabric is hard to deal with and your work space may get a bit messy...But it was fun, so I recommend this to you if you are also bored!

The materials you will need are:

• 267 yards of (some color) tulle; I got mine here
• Ribbon in the same color as your fabric; Got it here
• Thread ; (If you want to know...I got mine here)
• 2 yards Boning or zip-ties; ( I also got mine at Joann's though you have to get them at the counter)
• 3 old t-shirts; (2 need to be in the same color as your fabric)
• Sewing Machine
• Fabric Scissors
• Measuring Tape
• Sewing Needle; (Yes, unfortunately we have to hand sew)
• Pins
• Fabric Glue *optional*

Cut the bottom 1/3 of one of your old t-shirts and cut it furthermore into 3 pieces: a front panel, and two side panels. Sew them together, and make adjustments as needed. Then, hem all sides. Next, to make a lace up back (this is convenient if you want other people to wear the dress too) Make a few knots and arrange it in loops. Then sew it down. (I learned this trick from Micarah Tewers. Check her out here!) Next, get tufts of tulle and pin them in place. Make sure you like the placement of these tufts. Sew them down. Now, wrap your tufts around so that they cover the front and meet in the back. Sew this down. Now is the time to add your boning, I was trying to avoid this so I did it much later on, but here's how to do it. Take the casing and sew 4 in the front panel, 2 in the far back, and 2 on each side. Flatten out your boning with heavy books and if you are feeling up to it, round off the edges. Stick the boning into the casing and sew off the top and bottom. Take another one of your t-shirts (this one doesn't have to match the fabric), and cut off the bottom of it so that it matches the length of the bodice piece plus seam allowance. Sew these two pieces together or if you get lazy glue the two pieces together.

To achieve the volume of Ariana's dress, we're going to have to gather and layer yards of tulle. To start, take the last t-shirt that closely matches your fabric and cut the bottom 2/3 off. Cut the t-shirt at one of the side seams so that it is a flat rectangle. Make sure that it is a bit larger than the bodice. Resew the seam, but leave an inch or two unsewn so that it's easier to attach to the bodice in the future. This will be what you sew your tulle onto. Measure from your waist to the floor, this will be the length of your skirt. Now take your hip measurement and multiply it by 6, then divide it by 36 to find out how many yards (of tulle) you need to gather for one layer of the skirt. To make the skirt very cloud like, we will need two pieces of tulle for every layer. I wanted 8 layers of tulle for the skirt, so there would be 16 pieces of tulle in total used. Each piece of tulle for me had to be 5 yards, so for every layer I needed 10 yards. Take the two pieces of tulle and match them so that one fits perfectly over the other. Gather the long sides and adjust so that it fits your hip measurement. This gathering video came in handy! Attach the layer to the bottom of your shirt piece and keep layering like this until the 8th layer or until it is opaque. Don't cover the whole shirt piece with tulle, because you will still need to sew it onto the bodice.

Time for the ruffles! For the bottom ruffle I decided that it needed to be more fluffy, so I decided to add 2 ruffles on top of each other. After sewing on all the layers, measure the circumference of the dress. Multiply that by 6 and divide by 36. This number will be how many yards you will need to gather for one of the bottom ruffles. I got 20, so I will have to gather 20 yards for one ruffle. Before I gathered, I folded the yards twice so that it was 1/4 of its original width. It got more volume this way. Gather the ruffle by sewing in the middle of the tulle. Next, I 'floofed' the ruffle by pulling apart the layers. It made it look more cloudy. I sewed the ruffle onto the top layer of the skirt. Then I repeated these steps for the second bottom ruffle.

Start off by attaching the bodice onto the skirt, making sure that the front lines up with the back and that everything is symmetrical. I then made another ruffle. I first measured the waistline on the dress, multiplied it by 6 and divided by 36. This gave me the number of yards I needed to gather. I used the same method to gather the top ruffle as I did on the bottom ruffle. After I gathered and 'floofed' the ruffle, I hand sewed it in between the bodice and the skirt.

After trimming the skirt a bit, and adding any finishing touches, you are done! I hope you enjoyed making this dress as much as I did, and thank you for coming to check this tutorial out!