Leia's sleeves aren't just straight; they angle out a bit towards the wrist. Looking at the first image on the references page, it seems that the sleeve opening is about the same as the length of her forearm. After drawing out my pattern for the sleeves, I combined it with the body of the Butterick 5147 pattern. My first sketch of it had the body handing straight down, but I thought that having that slight flare would help match the fullness of the original dress. Plus, it's easier to take away fabric than to add more.

I laid my pattern out on the fabric so that the top of the sleeve and the center of the dress were both on folds. This gives me just two seams—one on each side—to sew, and keeps the dress all one piece of material. When unfolded, it looks kind of like a very large cross with a hole in the center. I made two of these. Each one had the side seams sewn from wrist to knee, and then were joined at the wrist hems and the bottom.

That was the difficult part about assembly, figuring out how to get the two dresses together so that all of the seam allowances were hidden on the inside. What finally worked for me was putting them together like I wanted them, then pinning the loose edges together in a few spots so I knew what went where. I then carefully pulled each section through the neck opening, turned them wrong sides out, and sewed them together. Each bottom "flap" first, then the sleeves. When I finished, everything was just like it should have been and ready for the hood and collar.

With my first version, I just make the hood a long rectangle, 18" by 36". While the width is just fine, and the back edge of the hood hangs down like I want it to, the front edge—the edge that goes by my face when the hood is up—doesn't hang flat. It makes the hood poof out when hanging. In order to have the front edge hang down flat, it needs to be longer than the back edge. The formula I came up with is this:

Both edges of the hood were narrow hemmed on the machine, ¼" turned over twice and stitched down.

For the collar, I just used the one that came with the Butterick pattern (a bias cut rectangle folded in half with the short edges sewn together). When I cut my neckhole out, I accidentally cut it just a smidgeon too big. Because of this, there's a half-inch gap between edges of the collar in back. I don't mind too much, because the larger neckhole and stretchy nature of my fabric means that I can pull it over my head quite easily. (A keyhole-type opening in back, like what usually goes on church Christmas pageant cosutmes, is more accurate, but as it's hidden by the hood anyway, I'm fine with it.)

To attach the hood, I figured out where the center of the shoulder would be, and pinned the corners of the long edge at each spot. The corners of the short edge were pinned at center back. The short sides of the hood were gathered between these two points and pinned down. The collar was pinned in place over it and the outer side sewn down with a machine stitch; the inside edge was whipstiched in place. To help close the gap, I sewed in three sets of hook & eyes, one at the top, the bottom, and in the middle.

I'm much happier with this version than the Butterick version. Not only is the material better, it looks so much more like the real thing.