SHANNON'Sdresses

EOWYN'Swhite wool

December 2003

This dress is an as-close-as-possible reproduction of Eowyn's 'White Wool' dress from The Two Towers, which she wears after the death of her cousin Theodred, as Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas and Gimli arrive at Edoras. I made this dress in the latter half of 2003 to be ready in time to wear to the midnight screening of The Return of the King in late December. I think I finished it that very afternoon. The couple of friends I went with dressed up as Frodo and the Witch-king of Angmar. It was a brilliant night. Pity we weren't allowed to take our cameras into the cinema - there were heaps of people dressed up, and they all had awesome costumes. From memory there were a couple of Arwens, a couple more Eowyns, a Boromir, another ringwraith, Gollum, perhaps an Aragorn, and even a Treebeard. It was awesome. The movie went until 3am or something and when I got home, being such a LOTR geek as I was back then, logged onto the internet and hung out at theonering.net until dawn. Then later on that morning I took more photos of me in the dress - which provided a hilarious set of before and after's.

Anyway, I digress. This is most likely the creation I am most proud of to date. I made my own pattern for it, spending hours in front of the TTT DVD going frame by frame through that first scene at Edoras to get all the details right, and in my opinion it turned out looking pretty awesome. The gown itself was made out of an old linen bedsheet (however the front and back had to be replaced with a bought cotton drill, so it's really only the sleeves) - lovely thickness and weight - and was lined with an old flannelette bedsheet - to make for warmness and yummyness in general. The girdle is made of three layers of thermal-backed curtain fabric - good for weight and stiffness, but not good for whole dresses! (See Blue Georgian). I used this same fabric for the lining of the bell sleeves, and ended up having to PICK the thermal backing off it because it was annoying me. The belt I made out of metal rings purchased from Spotlight (oh, how I love that place, like a kid in a candy store I am), onto which I soldered decorations created out of thin metal wire. The embroidery around the neckline I stitched myself, with some help from the good old interweb for the pattern (namely Alleycatscratch, where they actually later used my embroidery as an example!) - couldn't quite figure it out from the DVD.

So there we have it, my pride and joy, a nice welcome to the 'Past Projects' page. Pity it's lying in a box in storage right now. Only really wore it the once. But then again it's not really the most comfortable and practical dress to wear anywhere. Nearly wore it to a 'Heroes and Villains' party once, but didn't want to run the risk of ruining it in any way. Don't know what I'd do with myself if something happened to it. So it'll probably just stay in the box until the moths find it.