With all the work I'm doing on Diana's costume, I also had to keep in mind that I would need my own costume for this event as well. I'm actually a little more hesitant to give too many details on what I'm doing, as I don't want to tip my hand, but I can share a few elements of the costume with you.
First off is the main part of the costume: the dress. This is a simple shirtwaist dress, drafted with PatternMaster Boutique (of course). It has side/waist darts, a gathered skirt, and a convertible collar. Pretty simple. But for some reason I've been making some pretty stupid mistakes.
Here's the dress as it stands right now. See those stand-out cuffs? I sewed one of them in wrong THREE TIMES IN A ROW. Talk about frustrating. But finally I did get the positioning correct and they went in perfectly. Now the only thing left to do is the hem and buttons/buttonholes.
It doesn't really show in this picture, but the dots on the dress are NOT white; they are light gray. And the white collar and cuffs are actually dyed a very light gray as well. There's a reason for this, which will be clear once the whole costume is done.
(By the way, it looks terrible on this dress form because the form is too small. I don't have a dress form even close to my size; I was given a Dritz My Double plus-size form and was delighted to find out that it's much too large for me. One of my dress forms is almost exactly Diana's size, which helps a lot. But I really want one that's my size.)
Now, I needed a petticoat under this dress. Fortunately, the June/July 2011 issue of Vogue Patterns magazine happened to have instructions on making a petticoat. So I drowned myself in a sea of netting to make one.
A true petticoat should be able to stand up on its own. This one certainly does!! I have to say it was NOT fun to make; gathering all that netting is tedious. I haven't covered the seams with the ribbon as indicated in the article; I may or may not go back and do that. I'm also not terribly fond of the grosgrain ribbon as waistband, but it will do.
The last bit of costume that's done is the apron. This was made without a pattern; I just eyeballed everything. I did make a quick template for cutting out the pockets so they would be symmetrical. The ruffles were gathered using the ruffling foot on my Bernina. The pocket embellishments are made of felt.
I've got a week to get everything finished; I'm shooting for doing a "dress rehearsal" early next week to identify any weaknesses in the costume in time to fix them. Stay tuned!
First off is the main part of the costume: the dress. This is a simple shirtwaist dress, drafted with PatternMaster Boutique (of course). It has side/waist darts, a gathered skirt, and a convertible collar. Pretty simple. But for some reason I've been making some pretty stupid mistakes.
Here's the dress as it stands right now. See those stand-out cuffs? I sewed one of them in wrong THREE TIMES IN A ROW. Talk about frustrating. But finally I did get the positioning correct and they went in perfectly. Now the only thing left to do is the hem and buttons/buttonholes.
It doesn't really show in this picture, but the dots on the dress are NOT white; they are light gray. And the white collar and cuffs are actually dyed a very light gray as well. There's a reason for this, which will be clear once the whole costume is done.
(By the way, it looks terrible on this dress form because the form is too small. I don't have a dress form even close to my size; I was given a Dritz My Double plus-size form and was delighted to find out that it's much too large for me. One of my dress forms is almost exactly Diana's size, which helps a lot. But I really want one that's my size.)
Now, I needed a petticoat under this dress. Fortunately, the June/July 2011 issue of Vogue Patterns magazine happened to have instructions on making a petticoat. So I drowned myself in a sea of netting to make one.
A true petticoat should be able to stand up on its own. This one certainly does!! I have to say it was NOT fun to make; gathering all that netting is tedious. I haven't covered the seams with the ribbon as indicated in the article; I may or may not go back and do that. I'm also not terribly fond of the grosgrain ribbon as waistband, but it will do.
The last bit of costume that's done is the apron. This was made without a pattern; I just eyeballed everything. I did make a quick template for cutting out the pockets so they would be symmetrical. The ruffles were gathered using the ruffling foot on my Bernina. The pocket embellishments are made of felt.
I've got a week to get everything finished; I'm shooting for doing a "dress rehearsal" early next week to identify any weaknesses in the costume in time to fix them. Stay tuned!
Comments
Post a Comment
I would love to hear your thoughts... Please share!