SHANNON'Sdresses

Making ofYellow Medieval Dress

I wasn't entirely sure what era of fashion history I wanted this costume to fit into when I was designing it, but when I finished the drawing I thought it probably looked the most like an early Medieval gown - quite King Arthur-ish (or Lord of the Rings-ish) - although the colour is probably a bit bright for the period, but who cares. I have a ton of this awesome golden coloured fabric (curtains again - always is), and I thought that since I had so much I better make the most of it and make something really huge. Which is where the huge sleeves come in. And it's going to have a huge skirt too. It's going to be awesome.

I have a basic A-line two-piece pattern for myself from when I made my white Eowyn dress, which will work perfectly for this dress. I sliced the back of it though, and added a pleated skirt instead of just a flat back. The belt will nicely cover the seam - I hope. Am yet to decide whether to make a lining for this dress. I probably will, but it might be difficult - this yellow fabric is very flimsy and if I make a lining from the same pattern, it might not fit perfectly if the yellow has shifted in the cutting and/or sewing together. Next step: sleeves. I expect there to be a lot of cursing.

It's taken me so long to get round to working on this dress. I suppose that's what full time work does to you. Anyway, I've added the sleeves onto the dress, and also made up the lining. After I did it I realised I had suffered a senior moment and attached the arms the wrong way round than I had intended, but after second thoughts considered that this may actually work to my advantage. I have yet to decide whether to keep it as is or not. Next step is to fix the lining in, and construct the black trim around the neckline. At the moment because the fabric of this dress is so flimsy, the fabric stretches and the neckline falls over the shoulders, so I'm hoping together with the lining inside and the trimming this will keep the neckline more sturdy and give it more shape.

If you can make out from the shocking colours that my camera decided to capture of my dress on this particular day, you can see here that I am attaching the lining to the neckline of the dress itself, by tacking it into place. After this I simply cut the lining to match the square shape of the dress's neckline. I did the same for the back of the dress, and tucked in and slip-stitched the lining all the way down the zip - which you can see in the next picture. Next step is to attach the black trim.

The logistics of attaching this black trim were surprisingly hard to determine. Basically I made a huge long strip of the black fabric, with seams folded in, and furthermore folded in half, to simply wrap around the neckline. This proved harder than first thought. I ended up having to measure exactly the width and height of the neckline, and do some tricky sewing machine maneuvering to make the tucks for the the corners. I don't know if the picture helps at all, but it probably describes what I did better than I could with words. So basically I just trimmed the corners that I created and slipped it on over the shape of the neckline, and machine-stitched it into place.