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Sewing Diaries

The Dress

As of November 20th, the dress is finished! Scroll down to see the finished product!

October 7, 2003: Eowyn's dress is very simple, with no shaping or darts, and fastens in the back with an invisible zipper. I started the toile for this dress by attempting to remake a princess seamed Medieval style pattern. However, this ended up being more hassle then it was worth, and I ended up drafting the pattern myself.

October 26, 2003: Basic dress, without sleeves, is done. I made the dress slightly bias cut, no darts or other shaping. It fastens with a 14 inch invisible zipper. I ran into one major problem while working on this dress- I hadn't taken into account how much fabric the zipper would take and the tightness of bias cut dresses. Therefore the dress was too tight around the hips. It didn't look too bad, but I wasn't happy with it, and had very little room to let it out. Therefore, I added this extra triangular shaped piece in the back, lined up with the back zipper. It looks so much better now- the dress is much looser and the skirt has a cool drape to it as well. Not something I was planning on, but I'm happy with the result anyway.

I spent a while researching and looking at different fabrics before making my final selection. Thankfully, Katherine directed me to this wool crepe. Perfect! I ordered the 7 yards needed. It is a lovely fabric, very heavy but very fine.

Next came the sleeve lining. I found this gold jacquard and it is gorgeous! I almost hated cutting into it. I was lucky, all my fabrics ended up working out so well.

October 24, 2003: I ended up redrafting these sleeve about 6 times. The sleeve has such a distinct shape and falls a certain way, and a regular bell sleeve will not work.

I didn't make it as large or as rounded as I wanted to, because my lining fabric was 45 inches, and my wool 60. So, they fall in a similar way to the original, but are just a little smaller.

The finished sleeve....

November 1, 2003: I have just started on the embroidery of the dress- so far just a line of gold around the neckline. I've taken it out several times already- it's hard embroidering through so many layers! I have not decided how accurate I am going to be with this- here is a link to the exact design on the neckline. I might just do the belt pattern on the neckline.

I am using metallic gold embroidery floss from Michael's, and all has been done with a split stitch.

November 2nd-18th was spent embroidering the design on the neckline. I did end up doing the exact design from the original. To do so, I traced out the design on tissue paper, pinned the tissue paper over the neckline, and embroidered over it. When I was finished I picked out the little pieces of tissue paper with a pin. Last, I added 'flowers' with tiny gold seed beads. I'm very happy with the results.

I'm not sure why the colors are so off- the gold is not that bright, nor is my skin purple. :)