SHANNON'Sdresses

Making ofyellow Marie Antoinette dress

Even though I haven't seen the movie yet, I am in love with the costumes from Marie Antoinette with Kirsten Dunst. This yellow dress is a combination of all my favourite features of her dresses. I'm hoping I'll be able to use the Simplicity pattern from my pink georgian dress to fashion this one. I'll have to do quite a bit of altering, but I think I can manage it. I just hope I end up having enough fabric, I think this dress is going to be quite a fabric-muncher.

This is the basic shape of the bodice. To ammend the pattern I recycled from the pink Georgian dress, I scooped the neckline a bit more, and widened the top of the neckline to fit around the neck a little closer, and also made the bottom of the bodice a little less pointy. And just the same as I ammended the Elizabethan pattern, straightened the side seams.

Here, the arms are attached, and I have neatened all the inside seams by handsewing in strips of cotton tape over them, including the edges of the neckline and front opening. The armholes I simply zig-zagged closed.

This is the trimming that's going around the neckline and down the front opening. It is simply a 3cm wide strip of the same dress fabric, cut on the bias so it won't fray, and pleated and basted into place.

This pic shows the lace I attached to the neckline and front opening before I sewed the pleated trim on. I have a feeling that the trim might be a little wide, it just looks a bit bulky. But I'll decide about this later.

This is the last thing I had to do on the dress. I made the skirt extra long so I could bunch it up at the back a little and make a sort of bustle-type thing. I hope it looks ok, it looked fine when I was holding it up with my hands when I was trying it on, I hope what I did had the same effect. And I hope we get some good weather soon so I can take some photos of this baby.