The rental I looked at was over 20 years old at Ann's Costume Shop in Boonton, NJ. I don't recommend that store. The customer service was also dreadful but I would have overlooked that if the costume was great. It was battered and in horrible condition. The bottoms were no longer blue but faded to a pale purple which the owner kept arguing with me about as "artist interpretation" and not that I needed them but the boot covers were gold not red & white or even just red; and the accessories were peeling apart and looked like they were held together with scotch tape. Nuff said.
I got to back to working on my original...
The first thing I did was stitch the bottoms around the legs with the machine because my handstitching sucks; then I stitched the blue bottoms to the red in a messy fashion (it got skewed and slants to one side) but it's better than the snaps I had which just wouldn't hold. Then the hard part. I tackled making a belt big enough to cover the mistakes. I really don't like that "Adam Hughes" style as I said and my first attempt, as seen below, was not very good. The regular presser foot kept my stitches straight but pulled the fabric so it got dragged into angles; the zipper foot wasn't any better. I decided I didn't like the belt and tried two more times before getting one that is passable. I had to use the embroidery foot which means I had less control and my stitches are not remotely in straight lines but because the embroidery foot picks up after each stitch, it doesn't cause that messy drag with the fabric.
Tomorrow, after pilates, I'll get to the tiara. My plan for that is to use my ritual tiara (seen in the pics) and basically make a covering. I have to make a lasso "frog" to attach to the belt and also the bracers! So that's basically three more major pieces (because there is a bracer for each wrist) and the little thing to attach to the belt.