But before we get into the sewing, I need to talk a bit about the movie and its reception in Germany.

Did you know, that Sharknado has reached cult status in Germany for lovers of bad movies? There is a programm called Schlefaz – an abbreviation for “die schlechtesten Filme aller Zeiten” or, the worst movies of all times”. (They are advertising the DVD of Sharknado 3 in this clip)

And sharknado was first shown on German TV in season 2, episode 1 and the reception was overwhelming, the people loved and hated it. The hype got so far that the moderators of the show were invited to have cameos in the third and the fifth sharknado movie.

In 2024, my partner and I got tickets for a “Schlefaz” live show in München. We were to watch either sharknado 3 or Barbarians or King Kong vs Godzilla. It would be decided by loudness, so by the shouting and cheering of the people, just like the Spartans did, at the venue.  

And here I thought to myself, I need a sharknado dress.  

Here is what I did:

I made the pattern from my standard block. Here is the front part which was traced onto the fabric and then cut. I wanted to ruffle the middle part but it looked terrible and I didn’t like how it looked. So, I opened the front seam and instead made bust seams. But now the top was huge and I needed to make it smaller. And it turned out a bit too short. Oops? I cut out the skirt part then traced the other one from that and cut again. 

and then the back part. It is really just this stripe as I wanted to have a comfy shirring dress. This is why I am drawing these lines. I wanted three elastics, one at the top, the middle and at the bottom. Then I will be sewing tunnels with a backing and then push in the elastic band.  

I also made a lining for the front part and sewed it to the back with the right sides together. To get a nice round finish, I cut into the seams. 

Once this is done, I ironed both sides. I should have done this before but it’s so much easier to iron smaller parts than the whole bulk of fabric. I put the elastics in and pinned them onto the sides. Elastics are fun!  

Now that the front part is done from the inside, I turned it around and ironed it. then I pinned front and back on the side seams together. 

 And then came the tricky part, how the hell was I going to do the tornado part?  

At first I thought about drawing on the fabric but hated how it looked like:

I decided to make it with white tulle and fabric and tried to imitate how a tornado looks like I guess? I’m no designer and you really see how much I am struggling with this. 10 years of cosplay ruined every bit of creativity, I can only sew what other’s had already designed. So I cut and ripped countless pieces of fabric stripes. Cut, rip. Cut, Rip. It was quite the process. I didn't hem it to create a bit of a rough texture and instead, just went over the two layers with the machine in the middle two times to ruffle them. I then put them on my dress....and hated the way it looked. 

So now what... 

It was only three more days to go and I would leave for Munich the in two days time. Of course I panicked a bit. But in this panic came the idea to just create one tornado on the skirt out of tulle. and I rushed to my local fabric store and bought gray and black tulle.  

To make the sharks stick to the dress, I glued on brooch pins at the back. They were almost the perfect size for the brooch base. 

Of course I also had to add torn limbs and heads to my dress. I dissasembled a “sparkle girlz” with the help of my partner because it was not that easy to rip their limbs apart.  

Afterwards I then painted the joints red to imitate blood. It doesn’t look like much but I really ejoyed the process. 

But now the real time consuming part came – all of the frills were not only frilled in the middle, they were also handsewn onto the dress. Because why make it easy on myself?  

I was still sewing the frills onto the dress in munich at the hotel room. It was raining so much and bavaria had massive flood problems, I was just happy that we arrived safely and the event was not cancelled.  

And here is the dress. The sharknado on my dress is only visible as a close-up but I was very happy how it turned out.  

The event came and we did watch sharknado three, with the cameo. They also shared and showed  backstage material and their experience on set of the movie. When the time came for the autograph session, we stood in line for almost half an hour but when one of the moderator saw me he exclaimed “Beautiful” and that everyone, is why I made it. Hehe. 

And here is the video version of it!