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| Started: March 2005 Completed: April 2005 |
| I apologize for the lack of pictures, but I will take some soon (hopefully). This dress was made to wear in my Theatre IV final, which was a 30 minute one person show that conveys a message through a historical character. My message was that you should accept your place in society as defined by others (or something like that) and my person, as you may have already guessed, was Eleanor of Aquitaine.? For my piece, I needed a gown that would work for the character and would look period to my audience. In short, I needed a medieval gown and my LotR costumes would not work. The Dress I did my usual pattern scoping and picked out Butterwick 4377 as a pattern I liked and that would work for Eleanor. For fabric, I was originally inspired to make this dress similar to Eowyn's coronation gown. I ordered the baby roses silk jacquard from The Silk Connection and planned to dye it a buttery color. Unfortunately, my local Harris Teeter doesn't stock the entire line of RIT dyes so I was forced to compromise. My second color choice was red and so I dyed the fabric with one box of wine and two boxes of scarlet. The result was a beautiful muted red. In general, I did not find this pattern the easiest to work with. The princess seams in the bust were a little wonky and certainly drafted for someone with a larger bust. The biggest problem was where the skirt joins the bodice. In order to make them line up properly, the bodice needed to be gathered, which made it look just plain dowdy. To fix this, I stitched trim around the waistline seam, smoothing the transition from bodice to skirt. Also, the bodice lining added to the dowdy effect, especially around the stomach. My standard neckline problem arose again and I could not for the life of me get the neckline into the right shape so that it would lie flat. Necklines have proven to be the bane of my existance. Also, the hem of the skirt is insanely long owing to the 4 godets. The bodice is lined in white muslin from My-An fbrics, where I also bought the trim and the cord that laces up the back. In the end, everyone loved the dress and my show went rather well. I was very proud of myself for managing not to trip over my skirts, especially when I was playing a male character. |
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